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Library Cornell University
BJ1059 .G98 1898 Sketch of morality IndepM^^
3 1924 028 961 030 olin
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http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924028961030
A SKETCH OF MORALITY INDEPENDENT OF
OBLIGATION OR SANCTION.
BY
M.
GUYAU.
Translated from the French (Second Edition) by
GERTRUDE KAPTEYN.
London
WATTS &
CO.,
17,
:
JOHNSON'S COURT, FLEET 1898.
St.
CONTENTS.
....
...
Translator's Preface Preface
.
PAGE vii i
.
.
INTRODUCTION. Criticism of the Different Attempts
Justify Obligation from the
to
Physical Point of View.
Chapter
I.
—The Morality of Metaphysical Dogmatism — The Hypothesis of Optimism i.
.
-The Hypothesis
of Pessimism
-The Hypothesis of the
7
.
8
.26
.
.
.
Indifference of Nature
38
II. i.
ii.
iii.
— Morality of Practical Certitude — Morality of Faith — Morality of Doubt
.
.
.
45 V-
.
64
.
FIRST BOOK, On
the Motive Force of Morality from a Scientific Point of View.
First Equivalents of Duty.
Chapter
I.
— Intensity of Life the Motive Force of Action —The Highest Intensity of Life has Necessary is
„
II.
,,
III.
— To what Extent
„
IV.
—The
.
71
for its
Correlative the Greatest Expansion
Obligation.
81
.
Inward Power creates a Sort of
Power and Duty
.
.
.89
Sentiment of Obligation from the Point of
View
of
Mental
Repressive Force
Dynamics
as
.
.
Impulsive or
98
CONTENTS.
VI
PAGE
SECOND BOOK. Last Possible Equivalents of Duty for the Maintenance of Morality.
Chapter I.— Fourth
Equivalent of Duty Derived from Love of
Risk and of Struggle
—Fifth
II.
physical Risk. i.
ii.
.116
.
.
Equivalent of Duty, Derived from
Meta-
The Hypothesis,
— Metaphysical Risk in Speculation — Metaphysical Risk in Action
.
*
.
-135 .
147
THIRD BOOK. The Idea of Sanction.
ChaI'TER
I.
— Criticism
of
Sanction i.
ii.
„
II.
„
III.
,,
IV.
...
Natural
Sanction
and
of
Moral 152
— Natural Sanction — Moral Sanction and Distributive Justice .
—The
Principle of Penal
Society
.
.
or .
154
.
158
Defensive Justice in .
—Criticism of Invi'ard Sanction and of
169
.
Remorse
186
—Criticism of Religious and Metaphysical Sanction. — Religious Sanction i.
ii.
iii.
.
—The Sanction of — Conclusion
.
193
.
Love and of Fraternity .
.
.
197 .
208
;
TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE.
There fit
can be
little
doubt that the present moment
offers
a
opportunity for introducing to a large circle of English
own country, Guyau is already known in England by his remarkable and suggestive work on Education and Heredity and The Irreligion of the Future book of Guyau's, which,
readers this is
rightly considered
in his
masterpiece.
his
and another work from him, on so important a subject
may
as Morality, tion
furnish a
and encouragement,
evidently entering
much-needed source of
when moral
at a time
inspira-
science is
upon a period of renewed energy and
wider interest. Stimulated by the great
complexity of
life,
of the old creeds
the problems
difficulties of
under circumstances which render many
and
religions
incompetent to grapple with
demanding solution
chaos which threatens to retard fitful
reactions
;
an ever-increasing
;
distressed
all
the lovers of freedom
and
tion turn to Morality for the support
giving quality without which
life
is
by a mental
progressive efforts by social ameliora-
and the
doomed
to
strength-
decay and
destruction.
But, in order to reality,
make
the influence of morality a living
instead of a shadowy
study of
its
principles should
and conventional dogma, the be approached with a deep
Vm
TRANSLATORS PREFACE.
human
reverence for
nature and truth, and a broad-minded
sympathy, which alone can achieve success in so arduous an undertaking.
In
sphere of moral science, which includes
this
of most
Independent of Sanction or
He
all
that
is
importance to man, the author of Morality
vital
merits the study of
all
Obligation
a master-spirit.
is
men and women who
look for
the development of the highest and best from germs which lie
hidden in the
That Guyau
human
is
breast
itself.
one of ourselves, born in the central
of the nineteenth century, gives
and
actuality to his thoughts,
all
and
more
the
fills
life
significance
his writings with a
convincing interest which the utterances of authors belonging to earlier
times
cannot possess in the same degree and
intensity.
For
each generation the hope and the light
past
may
which has an
give us the eternal essence historical
forces.
The
its
and unquestionable value
present alone can fully express
and
own of human
must necessarily spring from
of the future
The
to
its
own
present must work out
;
present.
thought,
but the
needs, capacities,
its
own
salvation.
Neither Socrates nor Christ, neither Aristotle nor Buddha, neither Luther nor
Kant, can give us the keys to the
problems of an age which was unknown to them. the energies of our
new
birth,
springs of
life,
rise in the
most highly-gifted minds of our own
among
these finely-organized
Our
take their era.
And
and superior natures Guyau
stands one of the foremost.
Born
in
1856, a typical offspring of the second part of
our century, we find in him a personality specially endued with a genius for reflecting the intellectual and moral evolution of the age.
which we
His are the very doubts and negations
experience,
and
his are the very
hopes and ideals
— translator's preface. which shall
lift
ix
us out of the depths of mechanical materialism.
Exclusive attention to physical and external
phenomena has
occupied our minds, and shut us out from the sphere of
and emotional
reflective
activity,
which
none other than
is
the sphere of morality.
Guyau,
in
no way hampered by an antiquated education,
found himself, from the very beginning of life,
at the point
which even now a great many enlightened
minds only reach
":
a religious training invaded." that
is
From
—
should
danger
religion having
Guyau
so apt to be
Religion of thought
:
truth
to
on
a happiness to escape
it is
add
like to
possessed the
in his essay
religion of character is
to say, the loyalty this
Emerson speaks
" For a great nature
We
He
after a severe struggle.
great advantage of which
"Worship
intellectual
his
—
so apt to be
is
escaped,
his
lost.
and only
first
been the ideaUsm of a Plato and a Kant.
These were the masters from whose lofty conceptions he gradually evolved the standpoint whence the royal road to
human efforts.
self-direction lies
And
While acting
great discoveries of
by many of
his
artist
and
half
it
remained a witness
existence.
science,
the works of
understood or wrongly
would-be followers, found
in
intelligence capable of recognising their golden
grains of truth, a
mental
their
all
modern
only
Darwin and Spencer,
Guyau an
and
as the mirror of all the conflicting ten-
to the higher unity which underlies
applied
vision
and moralist with those of the
dencies and characteristics of his age,
The
his
his nature was such as to unite the qualities
of the thinker poet.
open before
verities,
mind open
to accept
some of
their funda-
but also a mind aware of their limitations
and shortcomings.
It
was given to
poet-philosopher to add
to the
this
young and aspiring
sound and healthy naturalism.
TRANSLATOR
X
S
PREFACE.
of his day an idealism without which moral evolution lacks its vital
him
and
spring
In him
meaning.
its fullest
from
lived,
went forth, an idealism which, while rooted firmly in
nature,
could nevertheless soar upwards into the higher
and imagination.
regions of thought
doing of goodness for
its
own
sake
He
material or outward obligation or sanction
own
solely
upon
living
and growing from
its
incentives its
and
own
believed in the
forces
seeds.
in duty relying
;
;
in a morality
This belief was
and development of
inspired by the expansion
from any
in virtue free
;
life
itself.
This new
faith,
freed from the bonds and chains which but
too often
doom
lower conceptions of morality or religion
to sterility,
opened up the prospect of a future
in
which
it
should become possible to realize the ideal of a sane, healthy,
and strong race highest
directing
its
powers and capacities to their
Instead of the external authority of a God,
use.
or the equally external authority of categorical imperatives
imposed upon our freedom (as even the great
Kant
still
more or
less
natural determinism
structed a kind of
Morality
and expe-
unto themselves.
thus conceived as a natural, internal energy
is
for good, translating itself into action
of
vitality.
It is
and thus the
life
by
its
own exuberance
an abundance of force in natural overflow, of a moral agent
fellow-creatures.
is
mingled with that of
which forms the
find a moral power,
as to
subdue
evil
its
Instead of an outer law of restraint, which
incessantly struggles with an unwilling individual (and this
and
of impulses
sentiments, which, disciplined through reflection rience, are a law
Immanuel
conceived morality), Guyau con-
basis
of ordinary morals),
it
is
we here
which may be so trained and increased
tendencies far more successfully than
possible under categorical imperatives or apodictic rules.
is
TRANSLATOR
The
great
merit
PREFACE.
S
book
of the
XI
that
is
unfolds this
it
ideal of the loveliness of the natural moral ideal, it
so vivid as to create the desire for
display
of
this
ideal
a
as
service in a period which
is
and renders
realization.
its
possibility
The
an invaluable
is
threatened on the one side by
moral dissolution, and on the other by a return to mental chaos and superstition.
was
The
to exist.
such
as
latter alternative
which loved
his,
believed in
Guyau perceived
Morality must justify
critical.
it,
and
itself,
that the situation
or
it
must cease
was not possible to a soul
and therefore already
virtue,
in the possibility of its
on
realization
earth.
If
no ready-made
no system, no dogmas, can be
theory,
got out of this book, there remains the great merit of bringing
home
us
to
conviction that
the
to
its
our time
new mental and moral
belongs the task of creating a
guidance, which shall enable the individual and the race to steer a happier course.
" This
a book student task.
a great task, and
is
which
many
It is
gives
to
the
our task."
is
it
and
serious
suggestions as to the best
way of
So ends
open-minded fulfilUng this
Guyau threw
thus both a call and a sign-post.
on whatever problem he touched, and, by virtue of his large-hearted sympathy and singularly gifted nature, his soul
light
realized
the
possibiUty
of ultimate
between those conflicting tendencies
harmony and peace
human
in
nature which
give rise to the riddles of existence.
As an
artist
moralist he different
he
felt,
taught,
spheres of
as a thinker he
that
only
human
could banish sorrow and
the
thought,
pain.
moral qualities were so mixed
discovered, as
a
harmonizing of the emotion, and
will
In him the aesthetic and that
his
conception
of
TRANSLATOR S PREFACE.
XU morality was
lit
up by the ardour and enthusiasm of
his conception of art
The intensity
aspiration.
his nature to
action
and
art,
and
was strengthened by steadfast moral of his life-impulse and force drove
go out towards others, thus exemplifying that
re-action of the individual
and
his surroundings
which may solve the problem of conflicting altruism and egoism.
No
nobler task than the one set by
to the twentieth century
;
and
Guyau could be given
to those
who
mission he should no longer be a stranger.
believe in
In Guyau,
its
who
has not unjustly been called " the Spinoza of France," they will find the inspiration
social efforts
needed
and reforms.
for the carrying
His high-souled
his ceaseless striving after truth
and
virtue
on of
sincerity
all
and
mark him out
as
a standard-bearer in the struggle for the emancipation of humanity.
Gertrude Kapteyn.
ERRATA. Page 44
;
six lines
from bottom.
For " antagnostic " read " ant^o-
nistic."
For "kivSvtjos" read " Kii/Swos."
Page 135
;
middle of page.
Page 172
;
eleven lines from top.
Delete "guilty."
"
MORALITY INDEPENDENT OF OBLIGATION OR SANCTION. PREFACE.
An
ingenious thinker has said that the aim of education
was to give to man "a bias towards goodness."* saying
shows
clearly
To
generally accepted.
there
may
the
foundation
of
This
morality
as
the philosopher, on the contrary,
not be in conduct one single element for the
presence of which the mind cannot account, one obligation
which does not explain which
is
We extent
itself,
one duty the necessity for
not clearly shown.
intend, therefore, to investigate
of
a
conception
should have no part
;
in
of
morality
the in
character and which " bias
which everything would be sup-
ported by reason, and appreciated at
its
true value, whether
with regard to certainties or with regard to merely probable
opinions and hypotheses.
—even schools is
those of the
If the majority of philosophers
utilitarian,
—have not completely
evolutionist,
and
succeeded in their
positive
task, this
because they wanted to put forward their rational moral
philosophy as nearly adequate to the ordinary moral philosophy,
as
having the same scope, and also
to have rendered *
it
as imperative in
its
" Le pr^jug^ du bien "
precepts.
{y'vasi).
pretending
This
is
not
MORALITY INDEPENDENT OF OBLIGATION OR SANCTION.
2
When
possible.
Science has overthrown the dogmas of
the different religions, she has not pretended to replace
them
nor to immediately supply a distinct object, a
all,
her position with
the religious need;
food, for
definite
regard to morality
the same as with regard to religion.
is
Nothing indicates that a conception of morality which
—
purely scientific
known
and
most part of feelings and
for the
is
on that which
to say, based solely
is
—must agree with the general conception of
composed
make
that
is
morality,
To
prejudices.
Bentham They were
these two conceptions of morality coincide,
his followers
One
wrong.
have too often violated
facts.
can, moreover, understand very well that the
sphere of intellectual demonstration does not equal in range the sphere of moral action, and that there are cases in which
a definite and rational rule happens to
Till
fail.
now, in
cases of that kind, habit, instinct, sentiment, have guided
man is
these
;
done with
one
is
may
be followed in the future, provided
still
clear knowledge,
and
that, in following
conscious of obeying, not some mysterious obligation,
human
but the most generous impulses of
with the most just necessities of social
One does instance, of
science
is
limited.
a purely
On
—by showing that facts.
scie»tific morality that, far
gerate the extent of her domain, limits
itself.
It
In such and such a case I tively in the
name
its
object as a
the contrary, to limit a science
embrace everything, and
its
—for
not undermine the truth of a science-
moral science
alchemy limited to observable
settle
nature, together
life.
often to give a greater stamp of certitude
that
it
them,
of duty.
;
is
is
but
Likewise we believe
should
not
pretend
to
from wanting to exagit
should endeavour to
must consent
am
chemistry
to
say,
frankly:
unable to prescribe impera-
Thus
the sense of obligation
PREFACE.
and of sanction can no longer
exist.
Consult your deepest
your most vivid sympathies, your most normal and
instincts,
most human aversions;
that
after
you may make meta-
physical hypotheses about the foundation of things, about
your
own
and
destiny,
of
that
Starting from this precise point, in other words, to
in morals
your
you are
fellow-creatures.
your " self-government."
— consisting, not in absence of
to yourself—
left
This
rule,
of scientific rule, wherever such cannot justify
Here begins
sufficient rigour.
is
freedom
but in absence itself
with
in morality the part of philo-
sophic speculation which positive science can neither suppress
nor entirely replace.
In climbing a mountain there comes
moment when we
a certain
hide the summit
;
we
wrapped
are
in clouds,
are lost in darkness.
on the height? of thought
It is the
which
same
one part of morality, which
:
is
mingled with metaphysics, may be forever hidden in clouds, but there must also be a solid precision the points where
basis,
man
and we must know with
should resign himself to
enter cloudland.
Among
recent works on morality, the three which, for
reasons, have appeared
different
important are
Spencer
in
;
in
England, "
to us
be the most
to
The Data
of Ethics,"
by Germany, " The Phenomenology of the Moral :
in France, "
The Criticism M. Alfred Fouillee. Contemporary Moral Systems," by
Conscience," by Hartmann
;
seems to us that by the reading of these works, so in
character,
time.
On
Naturalist
two points are brought forward
;
It
different
at the
same
the one hand, the conception of morality of the
and
Positivist schools furnishes
principles, either in the
sanction
of
way of
on the other hand,
morality can provide any,
it is
no unchangeable
obligation or in the
if
an
idealistic
way of
conception of
of a purely hypothetical and
— MORALITY INDEPENDENT OF OBLIGATION OR SANCTION.
4
In other words, what comes
not of an assertive nature. within the order of facts universal
disappearance
which
consider
it,
;
is
it
We
appears on both sides.
variability,
The
a speculative hypothesis.
is
imperative, in so far as
this
not universal, and whatever
is
absolute
accept,
result is that the
and
categorical, dis-
on our own account,
and, instead of regretting the moral
is
the result of
on the
contrary, as
future conception of morality.
within certain limits,
it
with
many
In
Hartmann on the imposed
transcendent
the
folly of
respects this con-
speculations
Spencer, that conduct has
a duty, we
as for
motive
most varied
intense, the fullest, the
In
M. de
of
the will to live and on the nirvana
by reason
logically
we
the characteristic of the
ception will not only be " autonomous," but " anomos." contrast
is
life
;
admit, with
power the most whereas our con-
ception of the conciliation of individual and social
On
other than of Spencer.
the other hand,
we
life
is
recognise,
with the author of the " Critique des Systemes de Morale
Contemporains
"
(M. Alfred Fouill^e), that the English
school and the Positivist school, which admit an " unknowable,"
have been wrong in expelling every individual hypo-
thesis
from
author,
this subject
that
;
but
we do not
unknowable
the
itself
think, as does this
can
contribute
a
"principle practically limiting and restricting conduct," a principle of
mere
medium between the
justice,
which would be, as
the categorical imperative of
free metaphysical
hypothesis.
The
it
were, a
Kant and
only admissible
" equivalents " or " substitutes " of duty, to use the
language as the author of "
appear to us to be I.
to
The
La
same
Libert^ et le Determinisme,"
:
consciousness of our inward and superior /ozc;^?-
which we see duty practically reduced.
PREFACE. 2. 3.
The The
5
influence exercised by ideas over actions. increasing
fusion
of
the
4.
The
and the
sensibilities,
increasingly social character of our pleasures
love of risk in action, of which
and sorrows.
we
show the
will
importance hitherto ignored. 5.
The
love of metaphysical hypothesis, which
is
a sort
of risk in thought.
These
different incentives
combined
are, for us, all that
a
conception of morality, reduced to facts only and to hypotheses founded
upon them, would be able
to offer in the
As
place of the categorical obligation of past times.
moral will
sanction, so called, distinct
from
social
be seen that we purely and simply suppress
as " atonement "
it
is
fvinda,menta.lly
immoral
to the
sanctions, it,
it
because
Our book,
should, therefore, be regarded as an attempt to determine
the compass, the extent, and also the limits of an exclusively scientific
conception of morality.
Its value, therefore, existsj
independently of any opinions which absolute
and metaphysical
may be
basis of morality.
held as to the'
I
INTRODUCTION.
CRITICISM OF THE DIFFERENT ATTEMPTS TO
JUSTIFY OBLIGATION FROM THE METAPHYSICAL POINT OF VIEW.
CHAPTER
I,
The Morality of Metaphysical Dogmatism. I.—The HjTpothesis of Optimism. II.— The Hypothesis of Pessimism. III.— The Hypothesis of the Indifferenee of Nature.
The
morality of
in itself" (un
metaphysics admits a
realistic
Men en
''good
a natural good distinct from pleasure and from happiness, a possible hierarchy of what
good
is
in
sot),
nature, and, for that very reason, a hierarchy
of the different beings.
conform one's
Is
it
are under obligation
?
Is
it
maxim, " To
not illusive thus to seek
good to be realized by
in nature a type of
we
It returns to the old
self to nature.''
us,
possible to
and
know
to
which
the basis
of things, and the true meaning of nature, so as to work in the same direction
any meaning us
?
at all ?
Has
nature, scientifically considered,
There are three hypotheses before
— optimism, pessimism, the indifference of nature.
examine them
in
turn, to see if they,
view of metaphysics, categorical obligation
accepted.
justify
Let us from the point of
the absolute, imperative, and
of moral
philosophy as
ordinarily
MORALITY INDEPENDENT OF OBLIGATION OR SANCTION.
8
THE HYPOTHESIS OF OPTIMISM.
PROVIDENCE AND IMMOR-
TALITY.
Such men as
Plato, Aristotle, Zeno, Spinoza, Leibnitz, supported optimism, and have tried to found an have objective morality in conformity with this conception of I.
One knows
the world.
all
the objections to which this
reality, absolute optimism is immoral than moral, for it involves the negation of progress. When once it has penetrated the mind, it pro-
system has given
rise.
In
rather
duces, as correspondent sentiment, satisfaction with things
as they are
everything
:
;
from the moral point of view, from the
justification of
political point of view, respect for all
authority, passive resignation, voluntary
stifling
every
of
and consequently of every feeling of duty. If all that exists is good, no change is wanted there must be no interference with the work of God that great artist. Likewise, everything that happens is equally good every event justifies itself, since it is part of a divine work, comIn the end this brings about, not plete in all its details. feeling of right,
;
—
;
only the exculpation, but the deification, of all injustice. To-day we are astonished at the temples which the ancients raised to
men
such as Nero and Domitian
;
not only did
they refuse to understand crime, but they adored
we doing anything evil
else, if
we
it.
Are
shut our eyes to the reality of
here below in order afterwards to declare this world bless its author? The worshipping of the
divine and
Romans the sign of an inferior moral on that very state, it debased and degraded As much can be said of the worship of a it still more. creative god, who should be responsible for everything, and who, in reality, is irresponsibility itself. Devout optimism is a state analogous to that of the slave, who is happy of the sick man, who is not conscious of his illness ; the latter, Caesars was with the
state
;
reacting
—
at least, does not attribute a divine character to his illness.
THE HYPOTHESIS OF OPTIMISM Charity
order to
exist,
9
needs to believe
in the
and indignity of the miseries which
reality
poverty, spirit
in
itself,
PROVIDENCE.
sorrow,
if
ignorance (blessed are the poor in
if
the evils in this world are not real
if all
!),
If
relieves.
it
evils,
and
bottom, wrongs and absurdities of nature, how will charity be able to keep the rational character which is the condition of existence of every virtue ? And if charity, like
are, at
a flame without food,
extinguished, what will be the value
is
of your world, which you imagine as a work of absolute
and all-powerful goodness ? Even pessimism can often be superior in moral value
charity, of absolute
exaggerated optimism direction of progress
:
;
it
does not always
if it is
to
fetter effort in the
painful to see everything in
sometimes more useful than to see everything in rose colour. Pessimism may be the symptom of an unhealthy over-excitement of the moral sense greatly hurt by the evils of this world ; optimism, on the contrary, too often Whoindicates an apathy, a numbness of all moral feeling. ever does not reflect, and is actuated merely by habit, has a strong tendency to optimism ; the people, being ignorant,
black,
it is
taken in a mass, are
— especially
the
in
— pretty
country
nearly satisfied with the present state of things
by routine
more it
is
;
the greatest evil in their eyes
inferior
a population
this is the political
:
is,
the
more
is
;
they live
change.
The
blindly conservative
Nothing
form of optimism.
is
more dangerous than the desire to give to optimism a religious and moral sanction — to thus make it a guiding the human mind may principle of thought and of conduct ;
thus be paralyzed in lized
by
—had
his
God.
some angel
all its activities
Permit
me
— man may be demoraa dream.
to relate
or seraph taken
me on
his
One
night
wings to
transport me to the paradise of the Gospels, near the " Creator " ? one night I felt myself soaring in heaven, far
—
above the earth. As I rose higher and higher, I heard a sad and weary sound ascending from the earth, a sound similar to the monotonous song of the torrents heard amid
;
MORALITY INDEPENDENT OF OBLIGATION OR SANCTION.
lO
I disthe solitude and silence of the mountain summits. sobs, mingled with thanksgiving tinguished human voices groans, interrupted by benedictions ; I heard despairing
—
supplications, the sighs of the dying, rising with the
fumes
—
into a of incense. All this melted into one intense groan symphony so heart-rending that my soul filled with pity.
The sky seemed obscured by sun, nor the joy of the earth.
was with me.
"Do
angel looked at "
it,
I
and
you not hear?"
me
with
no longer saw the
I
asked him.
who The
and peaceful
look.
turned round to him I
a serene
he said, " the prayers of' men, ascending from the earth to God." While he spoke, his white wing glittered in the sun but it seemed to me quite black, and full of horror. "What tears I should shed were I that God!" I I exclaimed and I began, indeed, to cry like a child. loosened the hand of the angel, and let myself fall down
These
are,"
;
;
again to the earth, thinking there remained in
humanity
to
make
it
possible for
me
me
too
much
to live in heaven.
If optitnism, instead of considering the world as actually good, tried to re-establish the notion of a continual progress,
regulated by a Divine law, would
it
succeed better in solving
the problems of this world, and in laying the foundation of
human If,
morality
?
We
do not believe
it.
with the optimists, one postulates a remote aim, which
should be the same for
all
beings, the
means of
attaining
aim are so opposite in character that the moralist will be unable to deduce from the knowledge of the aim a this
practical
perhaps
may
rule
of
many roads
conduct.
All
roads
lead
to
Rome;
and injustice Even for humanity
lead to the universal
ainu,
same purpose as justice. sometimes as sure a means of progress as agreement and, from a universally optimistic point of view, it is not evident why the human good will should be more conformable than the evil will to the hidden ends of nature or of God. All conscious will is often even useless, and good seems to be able to work itself out at least partially— serve the
strife is ;
—
THE HYPOTHESIS OF OPTIMISM
—PROVIDENCE.
II
without the intervention of man. A rock on which a child has just split its forehead may be of more service to the future well-being of this globe than that child, since the
rock has been concentrating in itself, during thousands of years, a portion of the solar heat, and thus helps in some degree to retard the cooling of the earth.
The to
morality of
contribute to the
are too
The
many
optimist
good
possible ways.
teacher of gymnastics,
dogmatism commands whole; but Everything can be
of
the
who placed
us
there useful.
same room a
in the
Christ and of himself, believed that he was doing as much as Jesus for humanity. Perhaps he was not wrong with regard to universal and providential evoluportrait of Jesus
The greatest nations have been those whose people were strongest and had the most robust appetite. The Romans astonished the world by their gluttony the EngUsh, the Germans, the Russians (who will have so very important a part to play in the future), are great eaters ; even the egoist himself can work for universal perfection he can produce a healthy, vigorous, hardy generation. Egoism has made tion.
;
—
the English race great.
was a naive egoist
In
many
—the genius of
respects
Erasmus Darwin
grandson has justified it. Everything becomes merely relative, when viewed with regard to the total results for the whole universe. Which point of the Christian teaching do travellers tell us has most his
minds of the negroes ? The religious which one wanted to inspire them ? No ; but the propriety of the Sunday. And the African and Asiatic people, what did they adopt from Mohammedanism ? The drinking strongly impressed the law, with
of water.
In the great organism of the universe the microbe of typhoid fever and cholera has a duty to perform, which it cannot, and dare not, cease to perform ; man, also, has special functions
good. evil.
—the
man
of evil as well as the
man
of
Seen from a certain distance, good comes out of It is thus that great defects, great sacrifices of men,
MORALITY INDEPENDENT OF OBLIGATION OR SANCTION.
12
are often useful to ajiation.
It is told that Spinoza,
when
laughed at the sight of his favourite spider devouring Perhaps then, applying it the flies which he threw at him. to himself, he thought of the internal complaint which was ill,
him perhaps he smiled to feel himself likewise enveloped in some invisible spider's web, which paralysed his will, silently devoured by a multitude of infinitely small destroying
;
monsters.
Once more, in the immensity of the universe, the paths and roads followed by each being, instead of running parallel or of being concentric, cross one another intersect in every way. He who finds himself, by chance, at the point Thus there is at the of intersection is naturally bruised. root of nature which it is pretended is " as good as possible a fundamental immorality, which is caused by the opposition of functions between living beings, by the quality of space and matter. In absolute optimism the universal good is an end which employs and justifies all
—
''
—
—
means. Moreover, nothing
tells
us that the line which leads to
and humanity usually considered by moralists as the practical foundation of moral obligation. If a tiger believed that, by saving one of his fellow tigers, he was working for the advancement of the this universal
good passes
demands of
individuals that devotion to
all
directly through humanity,
universal good, he might be mistaken
;
it
is
better for all
do not spare each other. Thus, everything blends and grows smooth, viewed from the heights of metaphysical contemplation ; good and evil, individuals and species, species and environment. Nothing base is Spinoza, the optimist, said, " in the house of left, as that
tigers
Jupiter."
A
last hypothesis has been tried to, in a measure, save optimism, to excuse the creating cause or the eternal substance, without compromising the moral sense and the
instinct of progress.
An
effort
has been
made
to point
— THE HYPOTHESIS OF OPTIMISM
— PROVIDENCE.
I3
out in physical evil (suffering) and in intellectual evil (error, doubt, ignorance) a condition sine qua non of moral good. In this way an attempt is made to justify them. It is said that the purpose of the universe will.
The purpose of the
is
universe
is
not outside the morality
—
;
human
but morality
presupposes choice and struggle that is to say, it presupposes the reality of evil, physical or intellectual, and the possibility of moral
From this it follows
evil.
that all the
evil so liberally diffused in this
world has but one object to place an alternative before man. According to that doctrine, in which Platonism is blended with Kantism, the world itself should be nothing but a sort of living formula
Vega
of the moral problem. the suns, the
stars,
and
in the
their satellites
Lyre or Arcturus, all might roll for ever in
on some one day, in one hour (which, perhaps, has never yet come, according to Kant), a small impulse of disinterestedness might be produced, or that a glass of water might be given, with truly kind intention, to some one who is thirsty. That is beautiful ; but how to deduce " a categorical duty " from an hypospace, in order that here below,
it seems, to facts ? If the universe has value only as a simple opportunity for charity,
thesis so uncertain, so contrary,
its
existence seems difficult to justify, and the ways of
God
are very tortuous.
The
hypothesis which
we
are examining
presupposes
the existence of freewill, of a power of choice (at
noumenal). responsibility
Without absolute ;
neither
is
liberty there is
there merit or demerit.
accept, without examination, all these notions.
least,
no absolute Let us
Even then
we can prove to their partisans that this world, made according to their opinion with a view to morality, is far from being the best possible world even in this respect. Indeed, merit stood in direct ratio to suffering, I can very well imagine a world where the suffering would be still much more intense than in this one ; where the contest between right and wrong would be much more heartrending ; where if
.
;
MORALITY INDEPENDENT OF OBLIGATION OR SANCTION.
14
more obstacles, would be more meritorious. Let us even suppose that the Creator heaps up so many
duty, meeting
it becomes very difficult for be carried away by evil. The he triumphs in a supreme effort, Will If that which is most beautiful to
obstacles for his creature that
him not to give in
— not
merit of the creature,
be
if
infinitely greater.
God
in the
world
is
to
the resignation of Job or the devotion
why are the occasions for those high virtues so rare, and why does progress make them, day by day, still In our century a general of an army who more rare ? of Regulus,
behaved
Decius would not in the least
like
of his soldiers
mistake in
We
do
;
on the
not,
these
in
temptations which
and
St.
The
tactics.
assist the victory
contrary, his heroism
days,
made
Antoine tremble.
would be a every day.
level of virtue falls
experience
those
the vigorous bodies of
powerful
St.
Jerome
Progress most frequently runs
counter to the development of true morality
—that morality
which is not born ready made, but makes itself. Perhaps I have in me an energy of will which, fifteen centuries ago, might have transformed me into a martyr. In our days I remain willingly or unwillingly an ordinary mortal, for want In short, how poor is our age in true merit of hangmen. what decline in the eyes of a partisan of liberty and of If the only aim of the world is to put absolute morality the moral problem before us, we must admit that barbarism !
puts
it
much more
happy to-day
to
forcibly than civilization.
be deeply moral.
We
We
are too
are generally able
to satisfy our desires so easily while doing
good that it is hardly any longer worth while to commit evil at least, not on a large scale. When Christ was tempted, it was
—
on
a desert,
mountain;
he was almost naked, In these days, when the majority of people are well dressed and do not fast any more, the devil is not seen from so near; but then, if there is no longer a tempter, there is no longer a Christ. To in
exhausted by
explain
the
the
fasting.
world, you establish a sort
of contradiction
;
THE HYPOTHESIS OF OPTIMISM
— PROVIDENCE.
15
between perceptible happiness and virtue. You say, the world is all the more perfect as it is less happy, while perfection
in
lies
Well,
desire.*
the
will
exactly in
over grief and
triumphing
the terms of this
same con-
condemn the world. Each of its steps towards progress may be considered as a step backward. Every hereditary quality which we acquire tradiction
possible to
is
it
suppresses something of the absolute
in course of time
character of the primitive
God grief,
the only
and labour
;
all that
of a being enables
The
inwardly.
For every other being but
will.
means of approaching the Absolute which
him more
is
poverty,
limits externally the
successfully
to
power
unfold
Stoics liked to repeat that Eurystheus
it
had
not been the enemy of Hercules, neither had he envied him ; but that, on the contrary, he had been his friend and benefactor. They said that every one of us has also a divine Eurystheus,
who
trains us continuously in the contest
they represented the whole world, the great living Being, as a sort of Alcides in labour.
It
may be
so
;
but, I repeat
once more, our Eurystheus is not very ingenious in multiFate spoils us to-day, as the plying our trials and labours. grandparents of a family spoil their grandchildren. We live in an environment too large, too expansive; and the perpetual growth of our intelligence gradually chokes our will. You must be logical ; you can only justify the world by placing the good, or the condition of good, exactly in that which till now everybody has considered an evil. The con-
sequence
is
that all creatures, labouring to avoid what they evil, are labouring at the same time against
consider as an
your theory, and the evolution of the universe goes on in a diametrically opposed to your pretended good. Thus you condemn the very work which you wanted to exculpate. Everyone is free to find the good where he underdirection
stands
it
;
but, in whatever
* See those ideas (G. Bailliere; 1882.)
way he understands
summed up
in Vallier's
De
it,
he cannot
Vintention Morale.
;
1
6
MORALITY INDEPENDENT OF OBLIGATION OR SANCTION.
make selves
and
world truly good.
this
by thinking that
that
it
The
it
is
We
cannot even console our-
the worst possible of worlds,
therefore constitutes the
supreme
trial
to our
not an extreme, either for evil or for good ; it would be something to be absolutely bad but the absolute is not of this world. Nothing here below causes will.
universe
is
—
us to experience that satisfaction of seeing an aim pursued
and gained.
It is
impossible to trace a plan in the universe
—not even that of abandoning
all
to the meritorious sponta-
The world has not
its end in us, any more than we have our end in the world fixed for us beforehand. Nothing is fixed, arranged, or predetermined there is no primitive and preconceived mutual adaptation of things. That adaptation would suppose firstly, a world of ideas pre-existent to the real world ; secondly, a demiurge, arranging things according to the given plan, as an architect does. The universe would then resemble certain exhibition buildings, of which all parts are constructed separately, so that afterwards they need only to be adjusted to each other. But no it is more like one of those strange buildings for the construction of which everybody works in his own way, without considering the whole ; there are as many ends and plans as there are workmen. It is a superb disorder; but such a work lacks too much unity to be either absolutely blamed or praised. To look upon it as the complete realization of an ideal of any sort is to lower
neity of created beings.
—
;
our ideal
—consequently
to lower ourselves
;
it
is
an error
which may become a grave mistake. Whoever believes in a God ought to respect him too highly to make him Creator of the world. 2. The refuge of optimism is personal immortality, which would be the great excuse of God. The belief in immor-
suppresses
all definite sacrifice,
or at least reduces that Before the infinity of duration suffering does not seem more than a point, and the whole actual life diminishes strangely in value. tality
sacrifice
to very
little.
7
THE HYPOTHESIS OF OPTIMISM
The
— PROVIDENCE.
1
idea of absolute duty and that of immortality are
intimately connected
;
the consciousness of duty constitutes
for the spiritualists the distinctive
mark of the
individual in
the flux of animal generations, his seal of sovereignty, his to a place apart in the "
title
contrary, absolute
immortality loses
becomes a being
duty
kingdom of ends."
principal
its
If,
brought back to an
is
claim
—
existence
to
on the
illusion, ;
man
head is no longer enveloped in a mystic light, like Christ on the mountain, who was transfigured in ascending, and seemed on a level with
the
like
any other
prophets
divine
his
heaven.
soaring in
Besides,
immortality has always been the principal problem in the
conception of morality,
as
well as
of
that
in
religion.
has been badly presented, being confused with the problem of the existence of God. In reality, humanity cares little enough about God not one martyr would have Hitherto
it
;
sacrificed himself for that recluse of the skies.
looked
Man
for in
to
make
What was
us immortal.
has always been wanting to scale the heavens, and he
cannot do that
him was the power
it
He
quite alone.
God may
stretch out a
has invented
hand
to
him
;
God
in order
next he attached
But if to-morrow one were to say to the four hundred millions of Christians,
himself in love to this divine Saviour. " There
is
no God
;
there
is
only a paradise, a man-Christ,
a virgin mother, and saints," they would very quickly be consoled.
In
reality,
do not ask
immortality for
is
enough for us. As to myself, I I do not beg to be united
a "reward."
with those I have loved
—the
of disinterestedness
I
!
day when, for the first death might be the loss of eternal coldness
and
its
;
eternity of love, of friendship,
remember my great despair one time, it came into my head that love,
a separation of hearts, an
that the cemetery,
four walls, might be the truth
;
with that,
its tombstones from day to day, would be taken
who were to me like my moral life from me, or that I should be taken away from them, and those
c
1
MORALITY INDEPENDENT OF OBLIGATION OR SANCTION.
8
we should never be given back to one another. There certain cruelties which we do not believe because they
that
are
surpass our understanding.
We
impossible," because inwardly
we
say to ourselves, " It think, "
How
is
could I do
her light Nature becomes a personality to us is in all there us; seems a favour especially extended to her creatures such a superabundance of youth and hope that ?"
;
that we, even we, also are life.
dazed by
Thus the ancient form
this flood of universal
of the religious
and moral
this new problem of the existence of God is form immortality. This problem, in its turn, comes back to the question whether from this moment I exist myself, or whether my personality is an illusion, and if, instead of In the case of saying me, I ought to say we the world. there being in nature a single creature, however mean in appearance, who could say, " I exist," without doubt he would be eternal. Here we are face to face with two great First, real fusion of all apparent selves one with hypotheses. the other; real penetrability of all that which possesses consciousness in nature ; reduction of all units supposed to be substantial to phenomenal multiplicities ; never-ending vistas, in which the eye loses itself, opened within ourselves
brought back to
—
—
as well
as
outside
ourselves.
another hypothesis
—nature
Like an immense
tree,
Instead of
this,
there
is
having an end, the individual.
the sap of which
trated in a few kernels, perhaps
is
finally
also the sap
concen-
of nature
one point, so "as to expand later on. In would form lasting groups. Are there not also islets in the ocean ? What is more, some of these individuals would keep together, would get so much attached to one another as never to separate. If only to love were sufficient reason for union, such union would be eternity. Love would make us eternal. collects together at
that case, individuals
Unfortunately there are
The
first,
many
objections to immortality.
and one of the most
from the doctrine
of
evolution.
serious,
The
may be deduced character
of
all
THE HYPOTHESIS OF OPTIMISM
— PROVIDENCE.
19
integration, of all individuation, must be provisional, serving only to prepare a larger integration, an individuation more rich. For nature an individual is nothing but a phase of halting, a pause,
which cannot be
definitive,
nature would be arrested in her course.
The
without which ancients,
who
f
with Plato imagined nature to be dominated by immovablel types to which she eternally conforms her creations, werel
able to suppose that those works in which she had succeeded!
most, and which
came
pated in eternity
;
species,
ideas,
we
nearest to the eternal type, partici-
nature operated according to types,
if
might hope, by
fashioning
ourselves
according to these ideas, also to become immortal.
But
our
In the
days
a very
different
beginning of this century
it
conception prevails.
was
still
in
possible to believe that
the immobility of the animal species points to the existence of a preconceived plan living nature.
selves
— an idea
Since Darwin
transitory types,
we
for ever after
imposed upon
see in the species them-
which nature transforms through
the ages, moulds which she herself accidentally casts, and
which she does not hesitate to destroy one after the other. If the species is provisional, what then is the individual ? There is between the individual and the species a solidarity which has not always been understood. It has been incessantly repeated that the individual and the species have contrary interests, that Nature sacrifices one to the Would it not be equally and more true to say that other. she sacrifices both, and that whatever condemns the If individual is precisely the condemnation of his species ? the species were immovable, we might hope to be saved by our conformity to it. But no everything is swept away by ;
same whirlwind, species and individuals all passes away, The individual is a compound rolling on towards infinity. of a certain number of thoughts, of remembrances, of wills corresponding one to the other, and of forces in equilibrium. the
This
;
equilibrium can
only exist in a certain intellectual
and physical environment which
is
favourable to
it.
Now,
— ;
20
MORALITY INDEPENDENT OF OBLIGATION OR SANCTION.
environment can only be supplied during a certain Man, as he is constituted, cannot predict eternity. There is no indefinite progress in every sense, either this
time.
for
the
individual
or
The complete triumph
species
the
for
species are only middle
;
individual
and
terms between past and future. of
the
future requires their dis-
appearance.
Let us pass on to a second objection which can be made If thought, if will were immortal, they would possess a power superior to nature, capable of ruling to immortality.
According to this hypothesis, life and subjugating it. becomes a sort of struggle of the spirit against nature death would be victory. But why, then, do these triumphant souls stand aside, far from the eternal battle, which Why do they continues to be fought without them ? forsake us ? And while their power cannot be diminished by death, why do they not use that power in serving man, their
brother
How
?
profound, although to
themselves
was that belief of the ancients, who saw the souls of their forefathers move and act everywhere around them who felt the dead revive at their sides ; who peopled the world with spirits, and endowed these spirits with a more than human power If thought conquers death, it should become a providence to others. It seems that humanity would have the right to count upon her dead unconsciously
so,
;
!
as she counts
who
upon her
lead the others.
stretch out a
hand
heroes, her geniuses,
If there are
to support
and
they hide themselves from us
?
upon
all
those
immortals, they ought to
Why
to protect us.
What
strength
do
would
it
not give to humanity to be, like the armies of Homer, conscious of a race of gods, ready to fight on her side?
And
these gods would be their sons, their
crated by death
;
their
number would
own sons
conse-
continually increase
—
produce life and life Nature would thus create beings intended to become a providence over her own self.
for the fertile earth never ceases to
would blend with immortality.
;
THE HYPOTHESIS OF OPTIMISM
— PROVIDENCE.
21
That conception is perhaps the most primitive, and, at the same time, the most attractive which has ever tempted the
human mind. separate kills
According to our view, it is impossible to from the conception of immortality. If death
it
not,
releases
it
difference
or
it
;
cannot throw the soul into
impotence.
Hence, according
in-
ancient
to
—
must be spirits scattered everywhere active, and providential. The mythology of the ancients and savages, the superstitions of our country people, must be true. Who, nevertheless, would dare to affirm it to-day, belief, there
powerful,
or even to consider the thing as probable ? Science has never once proved the existence of a good or bad intention behind one phenomenon of nature. It tends to the negation of spirits, of souls, and consequently of immortal life. To believe in science seems to be to believe in death.
There
is
a third objection
induction of is
life
:
—
am
I
;
—
that illusive thing, the familiar
therefore I shall be. This illusion
Even to-day there are tribes found in who do not seem able to conceive that it is absolutely
not less natural.
Africa
man to die. Among this people the induction We Based on life still outweighs that based on death. We know that •civilized people are no longer at that stage. We nevertheless always hope 'Our present life has an end. Life feels repugthat it will be resumed in another form. nance in representing and acknowledging death. Youth is full of hope. It is difficult for an overflowing and necessary for
Whoever
vigorous existence to 'believe in non-existence. feels
in
himself treasures of energy and
cumulation of living
forces,
treasure as inexhaustible.
they have not yet said to
me
— seeing
•could run as fast
understands with all
felt
if
is
inclined
Many men
activity,
an ac-
to consider that
are like children
the limit of their forces.
A child
a horse gallop in a cloud of dust
and he believed that what we wish
I liked ";
difficulty
our heart we, however, cannot do.
it.
to
:
" I
A child do with
Astonished at the
things he does, he concludes that he can do everything.
MORALITY INDEPENDENT OF OBLIGATION OR SANCTION.
22
There is
is
nothing so rare as the right understanding of what Yet every man, when he comes to grapple
possible.
himself suddenly so he loses even the consciousness of struggle. Can our fight be against the earth, which carries us round the sun? It is thus that he who approaches death feels himself reduced to nought becomes His will, the toy of a power incommensurate with his own. the strongest force in him, resists no more, collapses like a broken bow, dissolves gradually, and slips away from him. with
certain
events
of
life,
feels
dominated, so subjugated, that
—
To understand how weak life is in face of death, we must have passed, not through those violent and brutal illnesses which stun hke a heavy blow, but through those recurrent maladies, which do not directly attack consciousness, which advance with slow and measured progress, and follow a sort of rhythm, seem sometimes to retire, allowing us to renew our acquaintance with life in apparent health, but again In this way throw themselves upon us and hold us fast. the patient successively undergoes the impressions of one who is born into life, and of one who goes to meet death.
He
has, for a time, the
ardour of youth, followed by the
And
exhaustion and prostration of an old man. is
young, he feels
his will.
He
full
while
he
of faith in himself, and in the power of
thinks himself capable of ruling the future,
ready to conquer in the struggle of flows with hopefulness,
everything smiles
which
upon him
is
life.
His heart over-
diffused over all things
—from
;
the rays of the sun to
the foliage of the trees, to the face of men.
He
sees in
Nature the Indifferent, only a friend, an ally, a mysterious will in harmony with his own. He believes no longer irk death, for complete death would be a kind of failure of the and a will truly strong believes it cannot fail. Thuswill ;
seems to him that, through force of will, he will be able Then, without his clearly perceiving to conquer eternity. fulness of life and youth, which was his hope, it, that gradually expends itself, subsides, disappears like water in it
THE HYPOTHESIS OF OPTIMISM
— PROVIDENCE.
23
a vase, which continually gets lower without our knowing whither it goes. At the same time, his faith in the future grows weaker and becomes dim. He asks himself if faith
and hope may not be the fugitive consciousness of an powerful for the moment, but all too quickly subjugated by superior forces. His will then awakens, vainly makes an effort to rise up /again, but falls back ere long with all its weight, giving way under the ruined constitution like a broken-down horse under its harness. Then the mind darkens. A kind of twilight seems to descend and to spread over all our thoughts evening is coming. activity,
;
The
sad
slow,
labour of
follows evolution has set
The
by degrees. vainly
exhausts
dissolution,
unity of
life
trying
itself,
which necessarily and disappears
Life relaxes,
in.
The
destroyed.
is
will
maintain
to re-combine, to
under the same law that bundle of life which is being divided, the union of which constituted the individual. Everything is loosened, is dissolved into dust. Then, at last, death becomes less improbable, less inconceivable to the mind. The eye gets used to it, as it does to the darkness, which descends when the sun has set below the horizon.
—
Death appears only as it really is an extinction of vitality, a drying up of the internal energy. And death, thus conceived, leaves less hope. We recover from an accidental stupor
how
but
;
exhaustion
?
is
possible to recover from complete
it
If the agony
to
make us understand
to
its
is
long enough,
that death
is
very end cannot be re-lighted.
most sad the end
—
it is
that they
first
undermined
a tree seeing
mountain
will
That
be
sufficient
A torch is
really
burnt
what
is
which leave us conscious to take away all hope ; that we
in those slow diseases
feel existence feel like
it
eternal.
assisting at
its its
in its very
depth;
it
is
very roots torn to pieces
own
we
like a
In this way one one approaches it limite," familiar to mathe-
overthrow.
acquires a sort of experience of death
near enough by this "passage h la
that
—
;
;
!
MORALITY INDEPENDENT OF OBLIGATION OR SANCTION.
24
Annihila-
maticians, to obtain an approximate knowledge. tion
—
at
or,
secret of death, but,
still, it is
it
life
—
that
if
no doubt, heart-rending
is,
better to
Truly eternal
dissolution
dispersion,
least,
become aware of
to
the
is
know
it
it
would be that which should not need
to disunite itself in order to pass through the divisions of
time, which would be in evidence at all the points of duration, and could with one stroke embrace all the differences which, We should then be for us, constitute that very duration.
able to imagine a class of beings, immovable, yet constantly
way as, on a meteorological chart, and we represent by fixed lines the cyclone of the passing storm. But this eternal life, now thought changing, in the same
we
prognosticate,
enviable, would, perhaps, constitute our greatest sorrow
;
for
the contrast between ourselves and our surroundings would
— —
be greater the anguish would be perpetual. Everything would fly before we could attach ourselves to it. The God of religions who, himself eternal, imagines human beings swept away by time could be nothing else but supreme indifference or supreme despair, the realization of moral
—
monstrosity or unhappiness.
Notwithstanding will ever aspire, if
all
the objections of philosophers,
not to an eternity without
The
to one of indefinite duration.
idea of time will always exist one's
self,
as the
To is
to
that
despair, said
all
—
something
leave
sheep leave their
feel
:
tufts
one's
sadness caused by the
to lose one's
self,
possessions
are
passing
heart breaks, like that of the traveller carried
country disappear.
to forget
behind along the road, of wool in the bushes.
away
Turning and looking back, the
Pascal.
never-ending voyage,
man
limit, at least
who watches
off"
upon a
the coasts of his native
Poets have
felt this hundreds of times. concerns the whole of humanity. The desire for immortality is merely the consequence of memory ; life, being apprehended by the power of memory,
It is
not a selfish despair
;
it
instinctively projects itself
into the future.
We
want to
THE HYPOTHESIS OF OPTIMISM and
find ourselves again,
have
lost
we want
;
to
PROVIDENCE.
meet again those
to
make up
for lost time.
25
whom we
In the tombs
of the ancients everything dear to the dead was gathered together
—
his arms, his dogs, his
committed suicide on his grave affection could be broken off attached to
land
;
Time
all his
surroundings
wives.
Even
like bonds.
—
And, whereas
life
all this,
Man becomes
to his house, to a piece of
he attaches himself to living persons robs him of
his friends
they would not allow that
;
—he loves them.
thereby cutting him to the quick.
continues
its
course, healing his wounds,
as the sap of the tree repairs the ravages of the axe, memory,
—
working in the contrary direction memory, that thing which, the whole material universe, preserves his bleeding wounds, and from time to time renews them. In the end this remembrance of past efforts and their
unknown throughout
makes us dizzy. Pessimism then succeeds Pessimism leads back to a feeling of impotence,
uselessness
optimism.
and time
gives us,
pretended,
is
at last, that feeling.
a great
pessimist, a
human
eternal.
is,
feast.
Life,
the Stoics
If that is the case, answers the
but a day, and the universe is a sad thing to imagine an everlasting feast, an everlasting game, an everlasting dance like that of the spheres. That which was at first a joy and a reason for It
hope becomes
after
feast lasts all,
at last
a burden
;
great fatigue overpowers
—
we should like to step aside to be at peace we can go on no longer. Yet we must live. Who knows that death even means repose ? We are hurried on in the great us
;
machine,
carried
;
away by the universal movement,
those foolhardy persons
who
like
entered the mysterious circle
A great ring entwined them, formed by the Korigans. so that, panting, they entranced them, fascinated them whirled round and round, until both life and death failed them. But the ring was not broken. It formed itself again ;
more quickly and the unhappy creatures, while dying, still saw through the veil of death the everlasting ring whirling them round. ;
— MORALITY INDEPENDENT OF OBLIGATION OR SANCTION.
26 It
is
easy
understand
to
how
excessive optimism has
produced the reaction tending towards pessimism. The germ of pessimism is in every man to know and to estimate life it is not necessary to have lived long it is sufficient to have suffered much. ;
—
THE HYPOTHESIS OF PESSIMISM. is equally difficult to prove as optimism ; it is equally impossible to base a sound and objective conception Pesof morality on the one system as on the other.
Pessimism
simism has as its principle the possibility of scientific comparison between pain and pleasure a comparison in which pain would turn the scale. This system can be expressed thus the sum of sufferings in the whole of
—
:
human
life
forms a total higher than that of
pleasures
its
deduced the moral philosophy of nirvana. But this formula, which pretends to be scientific, has hardly any sense. Should one compare the pains and pleasures with respect to their duration, this reckoning would evidently be
whence
is
against the pessimists
;
for, in
a healthy organism, suffering
Should one compare pain and pleasure with regard to intensity? But these are not fixed values of the same kind one positive, the other negative one expressible by the sign -1- the other by the sign It is all the more impossible to establish an arithmetical balance between such-and-such a particular pleasure and such-and-such a pain since pleasure, varying in function is
generally short.
—
;
,
.
;
with the intensity of desire,
moments
of
life,
and since pain
the resistance of the
sorrow or pleasure
will.
— the
is
never the same for two
varies equally according to
Besides,
when we
only ones of which
recall
a past
we have had
THE HYPOTHESIS OF PESSIMISM.
27
—
we can only do it with all kinds of alterations, and with countless psychological illusions. In general, pessimists are inclined to compare these two extremes pleasure (volupt) and pain hence the predominance which this latter takes in their eyes. Pleasure, properly speaking, is after all a rarity and a luxury many people prefer to do without it, and thus to avoid suffering. The refined enjoyment of drinking out of a crystal cup cannot be compared with the pain of thirst. But a pessimistic conception of morality takes no account of the permanent and spontaneous pleasure of living that is experience
—
;
;
;
because in
this pleasure,
remembrance.
It
being continuous, shrinks, is
a law of
memory
is
reduced
that sensations
and emotions of the same nature blend confusedly, collect into a vague mass, and at last become nothing but an imperceptible point. I live, I enjoy and this enjoyment of living appears to me, at the actual moment, worth the price. But, if I go back in memory, the indefinite series of pleasant moments forming the thread of life become mixed, ;
reduced to insignificance, because they are
On
rupted.
moments ficance
;
the
all alike
uninter-
other hand, in contrast with these, the
of intense pleasure and pain increase in signi-
they seem isolated, and stand out prominently from
the uniform line of existence.
But intense pleasure, thus detached from the general is not in my remembrance sufficient to
pleasure of living,
counterbalance
suffering
;
this
is
also
proved by other
psychological laws.
weakens in remembrance no longer awakens the desire, which forms a On the part of every sensation and pleasant experience). contrary, there is in pain an element which does not weaken with time, and often grows stronger that is, what is called Intense
(above
pleasure very soon
all, if it
—
the sentiment of intokrability.
A violent
pain which, after
proved to have been bearable, may be absolutely unbearable in remembrance, and so much so that, at cessation,
is
MORALITY INDEPENDENT OF OBLIGATION OR SANCTION.
28
preceding and ensuing pleasures hence a new optical illusion which has to Pain produces a sort of consideration.
the cost of that pain, lose their value
;
all
be taken into anguish of the whole organism, an instinctive feeling of Even danger, which re-awakens at the least remembrance. affect always therefore, will, a vague representation of pain the organism more deeply than a picture of intense pleasure Fear is in general more easily roused not actually desired. than desire, and in some temperaments fear is so powerful that
some people have
preferred death to a painful opera-
This preference did assuredly not arise from contempt of life, but from the fact that pain sometimes seems unbearable, and beyond human strength to endure ; in other
tion.
respects simply a sign of weakness of character, of cowardice.
Even
in
a brave
man
intense pain will re-echo
A
the anticipation or the
more
memory
of
strongly than that of pleasure.
soldier, recalling his sensations in cold blood, will picture
more
lively emotion the internal laceraany great pleasure in his life ; yet in the midst of action the wound may have seemed scarcely But the joy of noticeable, compared to the joy of victory. victory was connected with an excitation of mind, which has disappeared whereas the thought of his wound still makes
to himself with far
tion of a sword-cut than
;
him tremble even
to-day.
We
are always prepared to suffer
;
demands conditions so much more complex that we can only with difficulty recall them to our mind. In remembrance, therefore, pleasure and pain are whereas enjoyment
not equal.
We
must mention another cause of error
parison of happy and unhappy times of
the happy days are those which seem
life.
the
in It
is this,
shortest
comthat
and pass
most quickly the unhappy days, on the contrary, lengthen, so to speak, and thus occupy a larger place in our memory. Pessimism, after all, explains itself by psychological laws. Some of these laws make past pleasures, with which we are satiated, seem of less significance than the pains endured. ;
— THE HYPOTHESIS OF PESSIMISM. There are pleasures
others,
always
however,
seem
according
29 which
to
future
have a value superior to the pains which we shall have to endure to attain them. These laws balance one another. This explains the fact that
mankind
to
in general are not at all pessimistic,
and that
the most convinced pessimists rarely commit suicide. We always hope something from the future, even when contem-
There is a pleasure which dies, so to speak, after every accomplished action, which vanishes without leaving a trace in the memory yet it is nevertheless the pre-eminently fundamental pleasure plation of the past impels us to despair.
;
is
it
the very pleasure of action.
measure the attraction of this attraction
when once astonishment recollections,
withdraws the of
action
all
itself is
him who
It
constitutes in great
objects desired by man, only
when once ends accomplished. tries
and who does not
to
judge
are attained,,
Hence, the life by his
find in his past pleasures,
a cause sufficient to justify his efforts and his trouble. in life itself, in the nature of
our
for the justification of our efforts.
do not all
all fall into
activity, that
The
the calyx of a rose.
rain-drops of a cloud
Our
lead to definite and attainable pleasure
itself, if it
;
actions
do not
we act forown weight
but
falls by its ;. were conscious, would experience a
the sake of action, like the raindrop
the raindrop
It is
we must look
kind of intense pleasure in going through space, to glide This pleasure lies at the root of into the vast unknown. only it disappears from memory, which is no longer the unknown, but the known, and which altogether offers us only what is past and passive. life,
The
pessimistic conception of morality rests, therefore, not
but on a purely individual appreciawhich may enter many elements of error. AVe perpetually exchange pains for pleasures, and pleasures for
on
scientific reasoning,
tion,
in
pains; but, in this exchange, the only rule as to value is that of demand and supply, and we can rarely say a priori
such-and-such pains are greater than such-and-such plea-
;
MORALITY INDEPENDENT OF OBLIGATION OR SANCTION.
30
— those
There is no end of love, wealth, glory, etc. number of people offering themselves to undergo suffering and pain, even without being urged thereto by the sures
to the
We may conclude, therefore, that suffering
necessities of life. is
not the evil most dreaded by
man
—that inaction
is
often
worse that there is, moreover, a particular kind of pleasure which springs from conquered sorrow, and, in still
;
general,
from every expended energy.
is, in a great measure, an should therefore equally mistrust those boast of having been perfectly happy, and those
Unhappiness, afterthought.
who who
like happiness,
We
maintain that they have been absolutely unhappy.
formed by memory and desire formed by memory and fear. We rarely ever, consciously, have been perfectly happy, and Where, then, is absolute yet we remember having been so. happiness to be found if it is not in our own consciousness? Nowhere ; it is a dream in which we dress up reality ; it is the embellishment of memory, as absolute unhappiness is the darkening of memory. Happiness, unhappiness is merely the past that is to say, that which cannot return. It is also everlasting desire, which will never be satisfied,
Complete happiness
is
absolute unhappiness
is
—
or fear ever ready to reappear at the slightest thrill of alarm.
Hence, happiness or unhappiness, in the accepted sense from a comprehensive view of life, which is often an optical illusion. Certain rivers of America seem to roll along a mass of black water, and yet, if one of the words, results
takes
some of
this
water in the hollow of the hand,
it
is
which almost looked appalling, was an effect due to the mass of water and the bed in which the river runs. In the same way, each moment of our life, taken separately, may have this pleasant lack of
-clear as crystal.
Its blackness,
cohesion, this fluidity^ which scarcely leaves a perceptible trace in the
memory.
Yet the whole seems gloomy because
of certain luminous hours which others.
seem
to penetrate all the
THE HYPOTHESIS OF In
these questions
all
numerable
we
PESSIMISM.
31
are thus surrounded by in-
and absolutely certain We should compare only simultaneous sensations of pleasure and pain but each time that the comparison bears upon past or future Nothing
illusions.
is
real
except the sensation of the moment.
;
it implies error. The preponderance of pain over pleasure cannot therefore be proved either by experi-
sensations,
ence or
by calculation
;
on the contrary, experience
is
against
the pessimists, for humanity incessantly proves a posteriori the value of
life,
Does the prove
its
because
it
incessantly
looking for
is
it.
pessimist conception of morality attempt to
principle
by some argument drawn, not from but from the very nature of
mathematical calculation,
One of the theses of pessimism is that, presupposing desire, and desire springing chiefly from want and consequently from suffering, pleasure thus pleasure itself? pleasure
implies suffering, and is nothing but a fugitive moment Hence that condemnation between two painful situations. of pleasure which we find again and again, ever since the time of Buddha, in the conception of morality. But it is very incorrect to represent pleasure as thus connected with pain, because it is connected with desire, and even with want. It is only up to a certain point that want becomes Hunger, for instance, is painful, but appetite suffering. may be a very pleasant sensation. The spur of want is, then,
no more than a kind
general law
is
this
of pleasant
irritation.
—-want
The
becomes pleasant to every intellinot too violent, and when there is
gent being, when it is the certainty or the hope of
its
nea'r satisfaction.
It is
accompanied by the anticipation of enjoyment. so-called sufferings, preceding pleasure
— enter
—
then
Certain
like hunger, thirst,
formed by us of pleasure without them the enjoyment is incomNay, more taken by themselves, they are accomplete. panied by a certain enjoyment, provided they do not last the
thrill
of passion
as elements into the idea
;
;
too long.
Where
the lover recalls
his
impressions, the
—
—
MORALITY INDEPENDENT OF OBLIGATION OR SANCTION.
32
moments of desire seem pleasant to the very highest degree. They encircle the moment of keenest pleasure, which, without them, would be much too short and too fugitive. Plato was right in saying that pain can enter into the composition of pleasure; but pleasure, on the contrary,
The loathing does not enter into the composition of pain. which follows the abuse of certain pleasures is not at all inseparable from their use it does not appear as an element ;
in the conception
we form
Pleasure, therefore,
of them.
has this superiority over pain
—
that
it
not always produces
whereas pain, at least physical pain, by its mere cannot fail to give rise to pleasure, and, indeed, sometimes is so associated with pleasure that it the latter
;
disappearance,
represents in itself an agreeable
moment.
Sufferings of intellectual origin are not themselves absolutely incompatible with intellectual pleasures.
The former give make them paler,
less
striking
which
is
colours
—
not
so to speak Melancholy may make
not unbecoming to them.
certain enjoyments keener.
When
only the latter
very vivid, they mingle.
From
all sides, therefore,
not-
withstanding gloomy moralists, pleasure surrounds pain, and
even mingles therewith. Besides, those pleasures which rarely correspond to
any need i.e., aesthetic and intellectual pleasures develop, and become more and more an important element in our lives, the longer we live. Art is, in modern life, a considerable source of enjoyment, which has, so to speak, painful
no counter-weight
in pain.
with pleasure the dullest
those in which
we
does
— can
manner.
aim
to succeed in filling life
—
that
is
to
say,
man
;
—instead of
enjoy himself in an
And
is
of
from action it is "the great consolaBetween two expenditures of physical
rest
tion of the idler. force, the civilized
Its
moments
sleeping, like the savage
intellectual
and
aesthetic
enjoyment can be prolonged more than any other. We hear, inwardly, certain symphonies of Beethoven a long time after having heard them with our this
THE HYPOTHESIS OF PESSIMISM.
We
ears.
33
enjoy them beforehand by anticipation
;
we
enjoy them at the moment, and afterwards as well.
In order to solve (if this be possible) the question posed by pessimistic morality, we believe that we must address ourselves not only to psychology, but to biology,
and
find out whether the actual laws of life do not imply a surplus value of welfare over pain. In this case the positive morality which we uphold would be right in wanting to conform human actions to the laws of life,
instead of aiming at final annihilation of
life,
and of the
desire to live, as pessimistic morality does.
In the
first
place,
how
are the different senses affected
by pain ? The sense of sight is hardly affected at all by it. So also with the sense of hearing, for the discords which reach the ear, and all the ugliness which hurts the eye, are slight mortifications, which we cannot possibly weigh against the keen enjoyments of harmony and beauty. Pleasure also predominates very largely in the sensations
from taste and smell, as we generally eat that which pleases these two senses ; and, as we must eat in springing
order to
live,
the very conservation of
life
periodical satisfaction of the organs of taste
presupposes a
and of smell
—the
Lastly, very few real two being intimately connected. sufferings are caused by the sense of touch, if we localize
that sense in the hand.
All, or nearly all,
our physical pain,
therefore, originates in our tactile feeling, or in our internal
Even when more pain than joy comes to us from both these sources, we may still ask ourselves if the suffering would counterbalance the pleasures of all kinds given us But the question arises from a by our other senses. sensibility.
biological standpoint
:
Is
it
possible, with respect to internal
and suffering, on an average, preponderate over those of comfort and wellsensibility, that the feelings of discomfort
being
We
?
believe
question.
If,
it is
in
possible to give a decisive answer to this living beings,
the feelings of discomfort
34 MORALITY INDEPENDENT OF OBLIGATION OR SANCTION.
would be impossible. power does but translate into the language of consciousness that which takes place in our organs. really prevailed over those of comfort, life
In
our
fact,
vital
The subjective discomfort of suffering is only a symptom of a wrong objective state of disorder, of the beginning of an illness
the translation of
it is
:
trouble.
On
some
functional or organic
the contrary, the feeling of well-being
subjective aspect of a right objective state.
of existence well-being life,
illness
it is
it
tends to increase that very trouble.
it.
echo of mischief in the brain. into the brain itself
on
it,
corresponds to evolution of
not good to feel our ailment too deeply, or
the sensation exaggerates
re-acting
like the
Not only is pain the consciousness
pain to dissolution.
of a vital trouble, but
In
thus
is
In the rhythm
and
is
Pain
may be
then a fresh evil added to the
finally increasing
which
just
partial
disintegration,
regarded as the
A sympathetic trouble carried it.
first,
In this way pain,
appeared only as the consciousness of now herself appears as an agent of Excess of pain over pleasure is, therefore,
before
disintegration.
incompatible with the conservation of the species. When with certain individuals the balance of suffering and enjoyment is upset, and the former prevails, this is an anomaly,
which usually causes death to the individual without delay.
A being who
suffers
too
sary for the existence of
much
is
unfit for
an organism
that,
life.
It is neces-
taken as a whole,
should keep up a certain regularity in its functions ; pain should be banished, or, at least, be reduced to the lowest it
degree.
more natural selection works without more does it tend to eliminate the sufferers in
Besides, the
restraint, the
;
killing the diseased it also
stamps out the disease. If in these days philanthropy succeeds in saving a certain number of invalids, it has not yet been able to save their race, which generally extinguishes itself. Let us imagine a ship in a storm, rising follows
and
may be
falling
on the
crest of the waves.
The
line
indicated by a series of curves, of which one bend marks the direction of the trough, the other that
it
THE HYPOTHESIS OF PESSIMISM. of the surface of the water.
If at
35
one moment of the passage
the descending curve bears the ship down, and she does not
would be a
is sinking deeper and Even so is it with Hfe, tossed about on waves of pleasure and of pain if one
rise again,
it
sign that she
deeper, and beginning to founder.
:
marks these undulations with
and if the line of pain lengthens more than the other, it means that we are going down. The outline stamped on our consciousness by sensation
our
life
;
is
and
lines,
only a figure representing the very course of life,
in order to exist,
needs to be a perpetual
victory of pleasure over pain.
What we here inner sense, as
in
is
physical
dissolution
—a
beloved one
is
dying oneself. morally
say of physical
life
to lose
Moral
— crushes
he who,
after
In moral as well marks a tendency to
life.
For example, to lose a something of one's self, to begin
death.
suffering, if really triumphant, kills
the intelligence and the
some
violent moral
every sense,
to will, to act in
suffering will soon stifled.
suffering always
partial
as revealed by our
life,
also true of moral
crisis,
may indeed
be counterbalanced
will.
Besides,
continues to think,
—
suffer,
will
but his
gradually be
Life will prevail over the dissolving tendencies.
life the superior being is he who most delicate sensibility with the strongest will. In him, no doubt, suffering is very vivid, but it provokes a He suffers much, but still more vivid reaction of the will. he acts the more and as action is always a joy, his joy Excess of suffering over generally exceeds his pain. pleasure indicates weakness or exhaustion of the will, consequently of life itself. The reaction within no longer responds to the outward action. All sensation is a sort of demand addressed to each sentient being. Will you be happy or unhappy ? Will you accept or reject me ? It is the will which must answer and the will which gives way to weakness condemns itself begins a sort of suicide. In moral suffering one must distinguish between thfe
In moral as in physical
unites the
;
;
—
— ;
MORALITY INDEPENDENT OF OBLIGATION OR SANCTION.
36
One must upon system and those who are pessimists owing to
purely affective and the purely intellectual. distinguish between those e.g.,
—
Schopenhauer
happy ;
for
it
is
are pessimists
The
heartrending anguish.
resemble that of us
who
all,
life
after all
it
only
in the intellect
there,
it
;
were, on this scene
selves,
or,
if
for
No
and we go back
tragedy goes
some hours
not long ere the curtain
is
be very
possible to be sad intellectually without
being so in the very depths of our heart.
on
may
of the first-named
and they may
falls
it
acted
is
softly of itself, as
too entirely outside our real
still
into ordinary
life
which generally
upon and have a long posterity that is because they are, so to speak, happy in spite of themselves. But it is not the same with those who find
has nothing so dramatic to
system
may
offer.
The
pessimists
therefore live long
the world miserable because they are really miserable
those whose pessimism
— with
only an abstract of their
is
most
own
But they are condemned beforehand by nature, and, so to say, by themsufferings
;
these deserve the
The
selves.
full
pity.
consciousness of their unhappiness
the vague consciousness of their unfitness for physical
or moral
sufferings,
life.
but All
hypochondria, disappointed
ambitions, broken affections, are like an atmosphere less unfit for respiration.
is
Those who are
more or
greatly distressed,
sufferers from spleen, from true melancholy (many people are melancholy only as a matter of pose or system), have neither lived nor taken firm root in life. They are
the
sensitivists injured
The artists
by a
slight shock.
of suffering, like de Musset, Chopin, Leopardi,
Lenau, were not made for life ; and their sorrows, which have given us their masterpieces, were but the result of a bad adaptation to environment, of an almost Shelley, Byron,
which could maintain itself for a certain which could not last long. It is possible to lend
factitious existence,
time, but
a kind of If in
artificial
Hfe to the
head of a decapitated man.
such a case the mouth could open and articulate
— THE HYPOTHESIS OF
PESSIMISM.
37
sounds, surely these would be only screams of pain. In our society there is a certain number of people in whom the nervous
system predominates to such a degree that
Such
they are, so to speak, brains, heads, without body. beings live only by deception, by
They can speak
artifice.
only to lament, sing only to sigh, and their wailing sincere that
is
so
goes straight to our heart.
it
Yet we cannot judge humanity by such as these humanity, which is full of life, and from which the future will
come
Their shrieks of pain are but the beginning
forth.
of the pangs of death.
come iWe happiness
'to
is
conclusion
this
— that
a certain amount of
a necessary condition of existence.
Hartmann supposes that, if pessimistic day triumphs among mankind, all people return to nothingness of their own will. suicide will put an
however, encloses
end to
M. von
morality
one
will
agree to
A
universal
This naive conception, pessimism planted itself
life.
this truth, that if
human heart, it would, by degrees, and lead, not to the rather burlesque event of which von Hartmann speaks, but to a
deeply enough in the diminish
its vitality
theatrical
slow and continuous subsidence of actually realizing
the
sum
of
its
its
—
pessimism
life
—a race of pessimists
that
woes by imagination
;
to say, increasing
is
such a race could not
survive in the struggle for existence.
If the
and the other animal species survive, it is This world life is not too bad for them. of
all
A
ever living being
In
reality,
possible
it
is
race
is
not the worst
and remains moral philosophy of annihilation, to what-
possible worlds, since definitively
in existence.
human
precisely because
it
is
proposed,
is
it
exists
like a contradiction.
the same reason which makes existence
and which makes
it
desirable.
;:
MORALITY INDEPENDENT OF OBLIGATION OR SANCTION.
38
HYPOTHESIS OF THE INDIFFERENCE OF NATURE. If dogmatic moral philosophy searches for the most probable hypothesis in the present state of science, is
neither optimism nor pessimism ;
ence of nature. This nature us to conform
—shows,
The
optimist
fact,
human
and the
in short.
him
for
Listen,
will find that it
;
an absolute indifference
(2) with
regard to the pos-
will.
pessimist, instead of simply trying to
—
are moved, grow angry, rejoice, good or ill, beauty or ugliness qualities, on the other hand, to the man of science
understand, feel like poets attribute to nature
it
that of the indiffer-
—to whose end dogmatism wishes
in
(i) with regard to sensibility
sible directions of the
it is
—
there are only quantities, always equivalent.
Nature,
—
from her standpoint, is neutral as unconscious of pleasure as of suffering, of good as of evil.
The
indifference of' nature to our pains or our pleasures
an hypothesis not to be taken into effect. The absence of a Providence relieving our suffering will change nothing in our moral conduct, once we have admitted that the pains of life, taken on an average, do not exceed the joys, and that existence in itself remains desirable for every living being. But it is the indifference of nature to good or to evil which is of interest to morality. Now, a great many reasons can be given for this indifference. The first is is,
for the
moralist,
account, because
without practical
it is
the powerlessness of the
whole universe
any of
—the
human
What will be the a human action ?
appreciable way.
essentially
to the
it
cannot change in
result to the universe
evil
student of physical
moral temperature, and heat and
with regard to the
We do not know. do not appear to nature to be more opposed to one another than cold and heat
such-and-such
Good and
will
direction of which
cold,
they
it
is,
science; they are degrees of perhaps, necessary that, like
should balance each other in the
HYPOTHESIS OF THE INDIFFERENCE OF NATURE. universe.
Perhaps good and
evil neutralize
39
each other in
the world at the end of a certain time, as in the ocean the
movements of the waves neutralize each other. Each one of us makes his own track, but nature little heeds the different
direction of that track
; it is destined to be effaced, to disappear rapidly in the great, aimless tumult of the universe.
Is
really true that the sea
it
Pompey's ship ?
Has
than of yore, in spite of
waves ?
still
heaves with the wash of
the ocean itself one all
more wave
the ships which
now
to-day
travel over
good committed a hundred thousand years ago by a man of the tertiary age, can have modified the world in any single respect ? Confucius, Buddha, or Jesus Christ will they have any effect on nature after a thousand million years ? Let us imagine the good deed of an ephemera ; it dies, together with the insect, in a ray of the sun. Can the good deed retard for the millionth part of a second the coming of the night which will kill the insect ? Once there was a woman whose harmless madness was to believe herself to be a bride, and on the eve of her wedding. Waking iip in the morning, she asked for a white dress, and " To-day a bride's crown ; smiling, she adorned herself. In the evening sadness overhe will come," she said.
its
Is
it
certain that the consequences of a
action, or of a crime
—
mastered her, after the idle waiting she then took off her But the following morning, with the dawn, her ;
white dress.
" It
confidence returned.
is
for to-day," she said.
And
her
passed in this tenacious, although ever-deceiving, certitude taking off her gown of hope, only to put it on again. life
—
woman, oblivious of all deception ; coming of its ideal. Probably it has " To-morrow it will come." said, for hundreds of centuries Every generation in turn puts on its white dress. Faith is The whole of eternal, like the spring and the flowers.
Humanity resembles
it
this
awaits each day the
:
nature has, perhaps, such a faith scious
and
intelligent nature.
centuries ago,
—
at least, the
whole of con-
Perhaps, an infinite
on some now dissolved
number of
planet, the mystical
— 40
MORALITY INDEPENDENT OF OBLIGATION OR SANCTION.
bridegroom was already expected. Eternity, in whatever it be conceived, seems to be an everlasting deception. Between It matters not; faith bridges the infinite chasm. the two gulfs of the past and the future it ceases not to
way
its dream it sings always the same hymn of joy and of appeal, believing it new each time, although it has
delight in
;
lost itself already so
continues to stretch the more attractive
many
times without being heard.
arms towards the ideal, which is because it is vague and it puts on its
;
It all its
crown of flowers without noticing that it has been faded for hundreds of thousands of years. M. Renan has said " In the pyramid of goodness raised by the successive efforts of living beings every stone counts.'' The Egyptian of the time of Khephren still exists by means of the stone he laid. In a Where does he exist ? desert, in the midst of which his work is reared, as useless in its hugeness as the smallest grain of sand at its base. Will not the " pyramid of goodness " undergo the same Our earth is lost in the desert of the skies ; humanity fate ? itself becomes lost on earth our individual action is lost in forehead
its
:
;
How
humanity.
how
shall
we
give unity to this universal effort,
concentrate the infinite radiation of
life
towards the
same point? Each work is isolated; there is an infinite number of small, microscopic pyramids, of solitary crystallizations of Lilliputian monuments, which cannot form themselves into a whole. Probably the just man and the unjust man weigh neither one more than the other on this terrestrial globe, which pursues its way through the ether. The particular exercise of their will can no more affect the whole of nature than the beating of the wings of a bird soaring above a cloud can refresh my forehead. The celebrated formula, ignorabimus, may be transformed into this one illudemur ; humanity speeds on, enveloped in the inviolable veil of its illusions.
A
second reason which " indifferentism
optimism
is
that the great whole,
" can oppose to whose direction we are
— HYPOTHESIS OF THE INDIFFERENCE OF NATURE.
41
—
unable to change, has itself no moral direction there is absence of aim, complete non-morality of nature, neutrality of the infinite mechanism. Indeed, the life of the universe shows very little signs of regular labour with an aim. Long
ago Heraclitus compared it with a game. This game is that of the see-saw, which calls forth such shouts of laughter from
Each being counterbalances another. My part in is to paralyze someone whom I do not know to prevent him from ascending too high, or descending too low. None of us will carry away the world its tranquillity
children.
the universe
;
is
assured by our tumult.
At the
basis
the
of
mechanism
universal
we may
imagine a sort of moral atomism, an infinite number of egoisms set to struggle each against the other. There might
be thus in nature as many centres as there are atoms, as many aims as individuals, or at least as many ends as there are conscious groups or societies ; and these ends might
be opposed. Egoism would be the essential and universal law of nature. In other words, there would be coincidence between what we call the immoral will in man and the normal will of every being. This, perhaps, would be the Each individual would then be deepest moral scepticism. no more, and worth no more, than a soap-bubble. All the difference between the you and me would be that in the
first
point of view
;
we
case
second case inside right
are outside the bubble, in the
Personal interest would only be a
it.
would be another ; but compass
to prefer the point of view within our is
not.
destroy
The
My
soap-bubble
is
my
fatherland
;
it
is
natural
to that
which
why should
I
it ?
love of every limited being would be, according to
this doctrine,
as
illusive
egoist, in fact, deceives
which he exaggerates the beloved one.
as
the
love
of
self
may
no more value than egoism.
Rationally, love haS
;
himself as to his the lover or the
be.
The
own importance,
frie];id
as to that of
Again, from this point of view, moral
MORALITY INDEPENDENT OF OBLIGATION OR SANCTION.
42
good and evil remain for " the indifferentist " things quite human, quite subjective, without fixed relation to the whole of the universe.
Perhaps there is nothing which offers to the eye and the mind a more complete and more sorrowful representation of the world than the sea.
In the
place,
first
it is
a picture of
it is a force in its wildest and most unconquerable form display, a luxury of power, of which nothing else can give an idea and it lives, moves, tosses, everlastingly without aim. Sometimes we might say that the sea is animated, that it palpitates and breathes, that it is an immense heart, whose powerful and tumultuous heaving we see ; but what ;
;
makes us despair here is that all this effort, this ardent life, This heart of the world beats spent to no purpose. without hope; from all this rocking, all this collision of the waves, there results only a little foam stripped off by
is
the wind. 1
remember
that, sitting
on the beach once,
I
watched
They came without sea, roaring and white. noticed another and
the serried waves rolling towards me. interruption from the expanse of the
Behind the one dying
at
my
feet I
further behind that one, another
and another
—a
multitude.
;
At
;
and last,
further
still,
another
as far as I could see,
roll on towards me. There was a reservoir of infinite, inexhaustible forces there. How deeply I felt the impotency of man to arrest the effort of that whole ocean in movement A dike might break one of these waves it could break hundreds and thousands of them ; but would not the immense and indefatigable
the whole horizon
seemed
to
rise
and
!
;
ocean gain the victory
And
this rising tide
?
seemed
to
me
the image of the whole
of nature assailing humanity, which vainly wishes to direct course, to
dam
he multiplies
it
in,
to master
it.
Man
its
struggles bravely
;
Sometimes he believes himself to be the conqueror ; that is because he does not look far enough ahead, and because he does not notice far out on his efforts.
;
HYPOTHESIS OF THE INDIFFERENCE OF NATURE. the horizon the great waves which, sooner or
destroy his work and carry himself away.
where worlds
and
rise
In
43 must
later,
this universe,
we
the waves of the sea, are
fall like
not surrounded, unceasingly assailed, by the multitude of beings ? Life whirls round us, envelopes us, submerges us.
We speak of immortality, of eternity
;
but only that
is
eternal
which is inexhaustible, that which is blind enough and rich enough to be always giving without measure. That man becomes acquainted with death who feels the need of rest, who after work lets his hands fall in his lap, for the first time learns that his strength has a
an
ideal
;
We
is
speak in the same way of we believe that Nature has an aim, that she is
going somewhere her.
Only nature
limit.
We
so untiring as to be eternal.
that
;
is
because we do not understand
take her for a stream which flows towards
mouth, and
some day
will arrive there
;
but nature
is
its
like
To give an aim to Nature would be to narrow an aim means an end. That which is immense
the ocean.
her
;
for
no aim. It is often said that " nothing exists in That is true in detail. A grain of corn is made to produce other grains of corn. We cannot imagine ii field which should not be fertile. But nature, as a whole, is not compelled to be fertile. It is the great balance between life and death. Perhaps its grandest has
vain."
poetry
lies in its
equal the ocean. it
moves.
gives
grand,
down
It
superb
does not give
and takes
it
A
sterility.
The ocean
field
of corn does not
neither works nor produces
life
;
it
contains
or rather
it,
with the same indifference.
eternal cradle rocking
fathoms, we see
its
creatures.
it
It is the
If
we look
swarming life. There is not one of its drops of water which does not hold living creatures, and all fight one another, persecute one another, What does it matter to the avoid and devour one another. whole, of what consequence to the deep ocean, are these The inhabitants, wandering at random in its briny waves ? ocean itself gives us the spectacle of a war, a struggle into
its
its
44
MORALITY INDEPENDENT OF OBLIGATION OR SANCTION.
its breakers, the strongest of which cover over and sweep away the weaker ones, represent to us the abridged history of the worlds, the history of the earth and
without truce
;
of humanity.
It
so to speak, the universe
is,
become
This tempest of the water
parent to our eyes.
trans-
but the
is
continuation, the consequence, of the tempest of the air
;
is
not the shudder of the winds which communicates itself to the sea ? The air-waves in their turn find the explanation of their movements in the undulations of light and of
it
ether,
eyes could embrace the immensity of the
If our
heat.
we should
reason
— a war of
all
not carried away
human
amazing
see everywhere nothing but an
clash of waves, a struggle without end, because
against
by
all.
There
this whirlpool.
intelligence, nothing
can
offer
is
it
is
without
nothing which
is
Earth itself, man, us anything fixed to
—
which it would be possible to hold on all these are swept away in slower, but not less irresistible, undulations ; everlasting war also reigns there, and the right of the strongest. As I thus reflect, the ocean seems to rise around me, to invade all, to sweep away all it seems that I am no longer myself, but part of the waves, a drop of the water of those waves ; that the earth has disappeared, that man has dis;
appeared, and that there remains only nature with undulations,
its
endless
ebb and flow, its perpetual changes of surface, deep and monotonous uniformity.
its
which hide its Between the three hypotheses of a benevolent nature, an antagnostic nature, or an indifferent nature, how can one choose and decide ? It is an idle fancy to give man the law
j|',c
:
Conform to nature. is. Kant was right, not ask dogmatic conduct.
We
do not know what
therefore,
in
saying
this
that
nature
we must
metaphysics to give us a sure law of
— ;
CHAPTER
II.
Morality of Practical Certitude.
Morality of Faith.
Morality of Doubt.
MORALITY OF PRACTICAL CERTITUDE.
The that
morality of practical certitude'
we
is
and imperative moral
Some
law.
which we grasp by
intuition,
—a
good
and whose value
superior to everything else.
this
which admits
represent this
themselves as containing a substance is
that
are in possession of a positive, absolute, apodictic,
in
law to itself
to our
mind
Others, with Kant, represent
law to themselves as purely formal, and as not con-
taining in itself any matter,
any good, any
definite
end
but only bearing a character of universality, which makes
it
possible to distinguish the ends as
conformable to the law.
we
discern,
conformable or nonThus, according to the intuitionists,
by immediate
intuition,
dignity of actions, faculties, virtues
the
— such
worth and the as temperance,
According to the followers of Kant, on the deed is only proved if we
purity, etc.
contrary, the moral character of a
can generalize the principle of that deed, and thus show to be disinterested in
Against the stands,
above
first all,
its
it
nature.
conception of the morality of certitude
the old sceptical argument of the contra-
dictions of the moral
judgment
— of
its
relativeness
and
its
This argument has a dissolvent influence on the conception of the law itself, so far as it imposes in an It absolute way such or such deeds, such or such virtues. uncertainty.
is difficult
to
remain
faithful
to the rites of an absolutist
;
MORALITY INDEPENDENT OF OBLIGATION OR SANCTION.
46
if these rites begin to appear supremely indifferent, you no longer believe in the particular god which is worshipped by them. The problem put by Darwin on the changeableness of duty does not cease, therefore, to be alarming to anyone admitting an absolute, imperative, certain, universal goodWould the formula of duty change totally for us if we were
religion
and
if
descendants of the bees
?
There is to be done,
society
common
in
every
which implies,
— of the
work in
of
different
kinds
general, division of the
labour of the community.
Now, the
duties of one class of workers will surely differ
from those
task
of another class, and may become as strange as the morals of men-bees would be. Even in our present society there
These whose morals were not in the Middle Ages, nor are yet to-day, perhaps, the same as those of the rest of .society. Under Charles VII. an act was committed which are neutrals, as in the society of the bees and ants. .are
is
the monks,
the counterpart of the extermination of the males after
fecundation.
Companies of mercenaries, become
useless,
were exterminated it was believed to be a righteous act. Corporations might exist on the planet Mars quite different from ours they might have mutual duties very contrary to ours, but imposed by an obligation quite as categorical in form. On our planet on the earth even we sometimes .•see conscience change the character of its guidance. There .are cases in which the individual feels an obligation in a wrong way an obligation to commit deeds usually considered to be immoral. Let us name, among many other examples, that fact Telated by Darwin of the conception of certain duties in ;
;
—
—
—
Australia.
The people
kinsmen
in Australia attribute the death of
by some neighbouring tribe moreover, a sacred duty to avenge the 4eath of any relative by kiUing a member of one of .the neighbouring tribes. Dr. Landor, a magistrate in .their
they consider
to a spell cast it,
MORALITY OF PRACTICAL CERTITUDE.
47
Western Australia, relates that a native employed on his farm lost one of his wives through illness. He announced to the doctor his intention to start
go and
kill
the wife of a
man
on a journey,
in order to
belonging to a far distant
" I answered him that, if he committed such an act, would put him in prison for the rest of his life." Thereupon he did not depart, but remained on the farm. But, from month to month, he wasted away remorse tribe.
I
;
He
consumed him.
could neither eat nor sleep
;
the
—
haunted him reproached him for his One day he disappeared. At the end of a year
of his wife
spirit
neglect.
he returned,
Thus one
in
perfect health
sees that a sentiment
;
he had
more
obligation serves as an incentive to
fulfilled
his
duty.
or less similar to moral
evil,
or purely instinctive
Thieves and murderers may possess the sentiment of professional duty ; animals may vaguely feel it. The feeling
acts.
of having to do a thing penetrates the whole of creation, as consciousness and voluntary
far as
We
know what happened
movement
penetrate.
de Musset when he was young (the same fact is told of M^rimde). Once, being very much scolded for a childish freak, he went away in tears, deeply penitent, when he heard his parents say, after the door was shut " Poor boy, he thinks himself quite a criminal !" The thought that his misdeed was not so very serious, and that his repentance was mere childishness, wounded him deeply. This small matter remained engraved on his memory for ever. The same thing is happening to humanity to-day. If it comes to imagine that its moral to Alfred
:
ideal
is
a childish ideal
—changeable, according
to the
whim
end and reason of many duties are puerile, superstitious, humanity will become inclined to smile at itself, to bring no longer into its actions that This seriousness without which absolute duty disappears. is one of the reasons why the sentiment of obligation is of custom
;
that the
now losing its sacred on too many objects
character. ;
We
find
we hear it applied
it
brought to bear
to too
many
worth-
48
MORALITY INDEPENDENT OF OBLIGATION OR SANCTION.
less creatures
This variability
(sometimes even to animals).
in the objects of duty
proves the error of
all
intuitionist
which pretends to be in absolute possession of an unchanging reason for good. This moral philosophy, formerly adopted by V. Cousin, by the Scotch, and the Eclectics, morality,
maybe considered
as untenable in the present state of science.
There remains the formal and subjective moral philosophy of the followers of Kant, which admits as absolute only the imperative, and considers as secondary the idea formed of its object and application. Against a morality of that sort every objection drawn from facts seems to lose its worth for is it not always possible to find an answer by making a distinction between the intention and the act? If the act is practically harmful, the intention may have been morally disinterested, and that is all that the moral philosophy of Kant demands. But a new problem presents itself. Is there attached to the good intention a feeling of obligation truly supra-sensible and supra-intellectual, as Kant will have it ? ;
1\\% feeling oi obligation,
from brought back to a feeling of resistance, felt each time that one wants to take such or such a course. This resistance, being of such a nature as to be apprehended by the senses, cannot arise from our relation to a moral law, which hypothetically would be quite intelligible and independent of time. It arises from our relation to natural and empiric laws. if
exclusively considered
the point of view of mental dynamics,
The
feeling of obligation, therefore,
not moral
;
it is
sensible.
is,
is
properly speaking,
Even Kant himself
is
obliged to
acknowledge that the moral sentiment is, like any other, pathological; only he believes this sentiment to be roused by the mtr&form of the moral law, without regard to
its
subject-matter.
There
a mystery, which he avows
results
—an
from
this, in his eyes,
and suprawhich, however, produces a pathological and natural sentiment, respect.
natural law,
intelligible
;
MORALITY OF PRACTICAL CERTITUDE. " It
is
absolutely impossible to understand
a pure idea, not containing in
itself
ct,
49 priori
how
anything sensible, pro-
duces a sensation of pleasure or of pain
We
are abso-
how the universality of a maxim as such, and, consequently, why morality interests us." There is somewhat of a mystery here. The projection
lutely
unable to explain why and
domain of sensibility under the form of moral sentiment would be possible without a " why," of morality into the
and Kant nevertheless asserts it to be evident a priori. " We are obliged," he says, " to be content with thus clearly seeing h priori that this sentiment (produced by a pure idea)
inseparably united
is
to
the representation of the
moral law in every reasonable finite creature." The truth is, we believe, that we really do not see at all any reason a priori to join sensible pleasure or pain to a law which, hypothetically, would be supra-sensible and heterogeneous Moral sentiment cannot be explained rationally to nature. and a priori. Besides, it is impossible to prove by fact in the human conscience the act of respect for a pure form. In the first place, an unapplied and purely formal duty does not can
only
exist,
The sentiment of obligation, it to arise when there is some
be seen
is
clear,
subject-
and even the followers of Kant acknowledge this. Hence duty is never
matter given for duty, are
obliged to
grasped by consciousness, except as having relation to There certain contents from which it cannot be detached.
no duty independently of the thing we have to do, of the doing of the act. Moreover, there is no duty unless it be towards somebody. The theologians were only half wrong is
in representing duty as addressing itself to the divine will there, at least,
was some one behind the obligation. Now, in matter and form,
this synthesis of the real indissolubility of is
the
sentiment of
obligation
still
only formal?
We
from experience, that the sentiment of obligation is not connected with the representation of law as formal law, but is connected with law by reason of its evident E believe,
MORALITY INDEPENDENT OF OBLIGATION OR SANCTION.
50
subject-matter
and of
Law
aim.
its
law can only be
as
grasped by our mind through its universality ; but to this precept, " Act in such a way that your maxim may become a universal law," no sentiment of obligation whatever will attach
and
itself,
no question of awakened by it,
so long as there
deep
the
is
inclinations
social life
so
long
we do not conceive the universality of something, some end, some good, which may be the object of a
as
sentiment.
The
can but produce a logical
universal, as universal,
which itself is man and this
satisfaction,
instinct in
;
dency, an expression of intelligent,
still
a satisfaction of the logical
logical instinct
is
a natural ten-
higher form, which
in its
life
is
favourable to order, to symmetry, to similitude,
to unity in variety, to law, therefore of universality.
Will
be said that the universal law itself contains at bottom will pure will ? The reduction of duty to the will of law, which itself would still be a purely formal will, far from it
—
up morality, seems to us to produce a dissolvent on the will itself. The will to do a certain deed cannot be based on any law which is not founded on the The old practical and logical value of the deed itself. doctrine of Ariston, for instance, did not admit any difference of worth, any degree between things but a human building
effect
;
being
will
the aim
is
never be content to pursue his aim, saying that entirely indifferent, that its
moral value
lies
only
would at once give way, and indifference would pass from the object to himself. Man needs to believe always that there is something good in his will to pursue
it.
This
will
not only in the intention, but also in the act. The conception of a morality exclusively formal, independent of everything else, is a demoralizing one ; it is the analogy of the labour which the prisoners
obUged
to do,
and which
merely for the sake of turning to this.
It is
in
English prisons are
without aim
—
to turn a handle one can be resigned necessary that the intelligence should approve is
it
!
No
MORALITY OF PRACTICAL CERTITUDE.
5
of the imperative, and that a feeling should attach
I
itself to
object.
its
The
other day a
little
whose mother had entrusted
girl,
her with a penny for some small purchase, was crushed in
She did not drop the penny. Recovering from dying, she opened her firmly-closed fist, and handed her mother the humble penny, whose small value she did not realize, saying to her, " I have not lost it." There is something subHme in this bit of childishness ; for this little one life was of less importance than the penny which had been entrusted to her care. Well, whatever may be the moral merit which a stoic or a follower of Kant can reasonably discover in this fact, he would be the streets.
a fainting
fit,
absolutely incapable of imitating
it
knowing the worth of a penny. perhaps not the
faith in
his
—
he, the philosopher,
Faith would
own
fail
him,
possible merit, but faith
in the penny.
Hence
is
it
moral merit
is
absolutely necessary, where the question of
own
concerned, to transfigure in one's
subject-matter of the meritorious act,
value superior to
its
real one.
and often
eyes the
to attribute
A comparison is necessary,
a
not
moral
effort
will and the law, but also between the and the value of the object pursued. If the
merit
itself
still
only between the
seems good, whatever the
because we recognise in
it
ferred to a superior object, because
of living force, which
force in a particular case
use
;
but
it is
to the
always
its
use,
The
Let us suppose that we, from a concerned
we
see in
it
and not the power
which we approve.
view, could see all our actions is
is
a reservoir
may be wrongfully used. It is, which we approve of in the actual
sun, finally sees all things
universe
it
always precious, even although this
is
therefore, the possible use
will in itself,
object,
a power capable of being trans-
:
acts of disinterestedness
a good
in itself, the
upwards on the earth on a level. eagle, soaring
sufficiently high point of
become
level as far as the
many human
would then appear
interests
and
to us equally
;
MORALITY INDEPENDENT OF OBLIGATION OR SANCTION.
52
simple their object would not seem to us superior to the penny of the child. In spite of Zeno and Kant, we should then no longer have courage to will and to merit ; we do not use our will for the mere sake of willing. ;
It
is,
apodictical in sality, or, if
as an
Kant,
end is
in all its applications,
its
law, in universality for the sake of univer-
one prefers
it,
in the will for the will's sake only,
The sentiment
in itself
which, according to
attached either to pure reason or to pure will
we experience in our
the quite natural interest ties
admit that duty, variable remains certain and
therefore, very difficult to
and uncertain
or functions, in our intellectual
We
life.
is
superior facul-
cannot be
in-
different to the rational exercise of our reason, which, after all, is
will,
a more complex
which, indeed,
is
instinct,
effects anticipated in their cause.
because we think of the if
nor to the exercise of the
a fuller force and a potentiality of
many
seem
the tree does not already
but even then the tree
The fruits
itself
tree is valuable to us,
of the tree
—
at least,
to us beautiful in itself
appears to be a production, a
certain of our tendencies, In our love of " unity in variety," our aesthetic instinct.
work, a living
fruit
;
it
satisfies
the impression produced by "pure reason" or "pure will" are found If
all
these elements of pleasure, use,
tY\e' pureness
were pushed to
its
utmost
and beauty.
limit,
the result
would be the indifference of the senses and the intellect, and not at all that definite state of the intelligence and the senses which is called the affirmation of a law and the There would be nothing for our judgment respect of a law. and our sentiment to work upon.
II.
MORALITY OF FAITH.
Next
whom the form and practical, we a somewhat altered Kantism, which makes of duty to the moral
of the law in itself find
dogmatism of Kant,
is
for
apodictically positive
MORALITY OF FAITH. an object of moral
itself
Kant made
certitude.
no longer an object of
faith,
faith
begin only with the postulates
following the positive affirmation of duty. itself
53
To-day
faith
has
been magnified into duty. a
in these days, religious faith, properly so-called, has
If,
tendency to disappear, it is replaced in a great many minds by moral faith. The absolute has changed its abode it has passed from the domain of religion to that of ethics ; ;
but
it
has
still
exercises over the
nothing
lost
of
human mind.
It
the
power which
it
has remained capable
an example of this is found in the can call forth the most generous enthusiasm it may also produce a certain kind of fanaticism, much less dangerous than religious fanaticism, but not without of raising the masses
;
French Revolution.
It
;
its
Fundamentally, there
inconveniences.
difference between moral faith
and
is
no
religious faith.
essential
They each
contain the other ; but, in spite of the presumption to the con-
more more universal character than the other. If the God has ever had a metaphysical value and a practical
trary, still
too prevalent in these days, moral faith has a
primitive and
idea of
utility, it
is
power and
in
so far as
justice.
In
it
appeared to unite the ideas of
reality,
the following affirmation was
contained in the deliberate affirmation of the divinity The highest force is moral force. If we no longer adore the :
gods of our ancestors because,
among
—
Jupiter, Jehovah, even Christ
other reasons,
we
find ourselves in
—
it
is
many
We judge our gods, and, in respects morally above them. denying them, we often do no more than condemn them morally. The " irreligion which seems to predominate ''
to-day
is,
therefore, in
many
respects at least, the provisional
triumph of a purer faith, of a religion more worthy of the name. In becoming exclusively moral, faith does not alter ;
on the
contrary,
it
casts off all foreign elements.
religions appealed not only to fear,
inward
faith,
The
old
they invoked
the misleading evidence of miracles and of revelation
;
they pretended to rest in something positive, plain, tangible.
; :
MORALITY INDEPENDENT OF OBLIGATION OR SANCTION.
54
All these
{"fiper
"
of gaining, of " cadging " for confidence la confiance, as Montaigne would say), have now-
means
Everything becomes simpler. The formula useless. which has had so much influence in the world, " It is a duty to believe in God," resolves itself into this, which it
become
presupposed
and
It is
:
the same time, a
having
new The
of conscience.''
The temples is founded. law takes refuge in the " sanctuary is dead There remains the
great Pan, the nature-god,
humanity-god,
the
formulated, and, at
religion
lost their idols, the
Jesus,
dead.
is
inward and ideal god, Duty, whose destiny also to die If
some
we seek
The simple
a duty to believe in duty.
definite expression of faith is thus
is,
it
perhaps,
day.
to analyze this faith in duty as
is
it
presented
by the followers of Kant, and even by those of Jouffroy, we observe in it several assertions which differ widely, although connected with one another, and which are to be found, moreover, in every sort of
faith,
forming the distinctive
—
compared with science (i) full and complete affirmation of a thing which cannot be positively proved duty, with its principle of modern freedom, and all character of religion as
—
its
consequences
;
(2)
another assertion confirming the
first
namely, that it is better morally to believe this thing rather than
any other, or than not to believe at all (3) a fresh assertion by which belief is placed above discussion, for it would be immoral to hesitate for a moment between the better and ;
At the same
the less good.
be immovable, because faith,
it
time, one's faith
above
is
all
is
declared to
discussion.
thus defined, rests on this postulate
:
Moral
there are prin-
which must be asserted, not because they are logically demonstrated or materially evident, but because they are ciples
morally good
;
in other words,
objective truth.
Such
is
goodness
is
a criterion of
the postulate contained fundamen-
the moral philosophy of neo-Kantians Renouvier and Secr^tan.
tally in
To
justify
this
postulate
it
like
should be noted that
MM. it
is
MORALITY OF FAITH. characteristic of in act,
do the
goodness to appear as inviolable, not only
but even in thought.
evil,
55
but even to think
moment we doubt
Is
it ?
the
not injustice, not only to
it
Now, good.
our thought
evil is in
We
must,
therefore,
good more than in anything else; not because it is more evident than anything else, but because not to believe in it would be to commit evil. Between a simply logical proposition and its opposite there is always an alternative the mind remains free between the two and chooses. In this case the alternative is suppressed choice would be wrong. The truth can no longer be sought on either side. AW. problem disappears, for a problem would believe
in
what
is
;
;
imply many different solutions calling for verification so one does not verify duty there are questions which we ;
;
may
not address even to ourselves
must not
we
there are questions
;
What becomes,
raise.
for
example,
of
the
doctrines of the utilitarian moralists, of the evolutionists,
of the partizans of Darwin, in the presence of the belief in absolute duty sible
energy
examined.
They
?
are rejected with the greatest pos-
—sometimes
without having been seriously Moral consciousness always takes that side ; it
represents in the
human
soul the blindly conservative part.
A convinced believer will
never ask himself the question Is not duty merely an empirical generalization ? It would seem to
him
:
that such a question
scienceas an honest
man
";
would
cast a
before doing
doubt on
this,
he
The
science incapable of treating this problem.
his
"con-
will declare
scientific
—which always ready examine the For and Against, which sees everywhere a twofold way, a double the mind—has give way the case of the spirit
to
is
issue for
believer, to
thus, in
quite another spirit
commands
with so
face to face with therefore, placed
it,
;
for
much
him duty
in itself is sacred,
to
and
force that even the thinker himself,
can but obey.
The
belief in duty
once more above the region
in
is,
which science,
and even nature, moves. He who believes in duty is always such as Horace sang of, Impavidum ferient ruince. Moral
—
;:;
MORALITY INDEPENDENT OF OBLIGATION OR SANCTION.
56 faith
would in this way find itself guarded by its very which is to compel the individual to bow before it.
essence,
The
when attacked, seeks support The most superficial minds invoke a
belief in duty, however,
on various grounds.
sort of internal evidence, others
duty, others a social
moral
necessity.
There
I.
the " oracle
is,
"
We
or hesitation.
we
the
first
place, the internal evidence
—which
will
allow no reply
hear duty speak within us with a voice
believe in duty as in something which lives
part of ourselves
in us as a is
in
of our conscience
highest in
us.
;
and
The Scotch and
the
Eclectics tried
only a few years ago to found a philosophy on
—
palpitates
even more, as that which
common
This unscientific on prejudice. philosophy has been opposed with energy by the neoKantians and yet their system is also founded on a simple fact of common sense, on the simple belief that sense
that
is,
in
fact,
;
the impulse called duty
is
of quite another order than
all
the
These sentences recurring so often in followers, and at which to-day we are inclined
natural impulses.
Cousin and to
smile
his
— " conscience
"common
sense requires "
proclaims,"
" evidence
—are they much
proves,''
less convincing,
each in themselves, or in their generality, than these " duty commands," " the moral law demands," etc. ? This inner evidence of duty proves nothing. Evidence is a subjective state, for which one may often account by subjective reasons. Truth is not only that which is felt and seen, but that which is explained and connected. Truth is a synthesis therein lies its distinction from sensation from brute fact. Truth is a bundle of facts. It does not draw its evidence and its proof from a simple state of conscience, but from the whole of the phenomena which hold and support each other. One stone does not make an arch, nor do two nor three stones all are wanted. They have to rest the one
—
;
on the fall
other.
Even when the arch
to pieces completely if
constructed,
it
will
a few stones are taken away.
It
is
;
MORALITY OF FAITH. is
the same with truth
things. it
it
solidarity of all
consists in a
not enough that a thing should be evident
It is
must be
;
57
a truly
to acquire
explicable, so as
scientific
character. for the "
As
2.
duty to believe in duty,"
this is a
pure
might be said as well It is religious to believe in religion, moral to believe in morality, etc. Very well but what is understood by duty, by morality, by religion ? Is it all true that is, does it all correspond with reality ? That is the question and we tautology, or vicious circle.
It
:
;
—
;
must examine it, for fear of turning everlastingly in the same circle. While I believe it to be my sovereign and selfgoverned liberty, commanding me to do such and such an what
act,
me
urging
were hereditary
if it
instinct,
habit,
Am
pretended duty?
to the
I,
education,
according to
Darwin's remark, only a hunting-dog, chasing the game instead of arresting it?
much
importance, after
duty of the dog who
its
much a paw
tion,
as
the
Can you be
which science makes of the object
own
difficulty in
account, strictly
founding an ethical creed but science can
speaking
;
destroy every moral creed which believes
and
value ?
faith ?
Perhaps science has
on
duty, to which I attach so
only so
fetches, or gives
indifferent to the analysis
of your
Has all
although
The
struct.
best to
all
be positive
not always sufficiently able to recon-
is
it
believers
prove their thesis ethical creed
itself to
Science has an incalculable power for destrucr
absolute.
is
if
in
moral
faith
would not even
they succeeded in proving that their
the most complete,
is
that
which responds
interrogations of the moral agent, that which
has least to fear from the exceptions and subtleties of which may push the moral agent, without re-
casuistry,
sistance, to the
When all this,
extreme of absolute devotion.
the believers in the moral creed shall have proved
they will
—
have done nothing no more than the and such a religion, if they could prove
still
believers in such
MORALITY INDEPENDENT OF OBLIGATION OR SANCTION.
S8
that their religion
is
who defend a
Apologists
the best.
have never proved anything, for there always remains one question which they forget namely, Is there is any true religion or true particular system of morals or religion
—
morality ? Historically, every creed
applied
— has
—
whatever object
to
always seemed binding to the
it
might be
man who
pos-
marks a certain habitual direction of mind, and because a resistance is felt if one abruptly seeks to change this direction. Faith is an acquired habit, and a sort of intellectual instinct, which weighs sessed
it.
heavily
That
upon
is
because
faith
us, constrains us,
and, in a certain sense, pro-
duces a sentiment of obligation. But faith can have no binding force whatever on him who does not possess it. We cannot be obliged to affirm that which on the whole we do not know and do not believe. The duty of believing exists, therefore, only for those who already believe
with
it,
;
in other words, faith,
like every
when it
is
given, brings
powerful and deeply-rooted habit, that
sentiment of obligation which seems attached to obligation does hot precede faith, does not
it
;
but the
command
it
—at
Reason can only be commanded in the name of science, or in the name of an already formed faith. Belief outside the range of our not rationally speaking.
least
knowledge can, therefore, never have anything obligatory about it.
On
the other hand, a mere doubt would be enough to
absolve from any obligation which arises only from
And duty
this
—the
doubt, once
become
conscious,
faith.
would create a
duty of being consistent to ourselves, of not
blindly solving an uncertain problem, of not closing an open question in such a way that to the " duty to believe in
conceived by the believer, can be opposed the duty doubt duty, which imposes itself on him who denies. If it can be said of faith that it has obligations, the same may be said of doubt. duty,'' as
to
MORALITY OF FAITH. 3.
The attempt
is
I
made
also
the social necessity for
it
—a
to give
59
a motive to
faith
by
very outward motive indeed
:
believe in duty, because without duty society could not
This
exist.
the same argument as the one given by thflise " because the people must have a religion,
is
who go to mass and we must set
:
There
the example."
a certain scepticism at the bottom of faith thus understood. husband having suspicions of his wife prefers not to go too deeply into them, prefers the quiet of habit to the possible anguish of truth. Thus w^ sometimes is
A
do with
We would
rather be deceived by her and moral peace before truth. But within us truth will find its way. To truth might be applied what Christ said of himself " I have come to bring war into nature.
follow her
;
we ask
for
:
souls.''
This half-scepticism of objections of a
Necessity generally inner necessity
more reason morality
faith calls forth
more complete and more is
may be
for a
and
not truth, the sceptics a necessary illusion
social
may be based on
the
justifies
logical scepticism.
;
will
there
necessity to be such.
say is
;
all
an the
Practical
a system of useful errors which
and corrects. Thus optics which are constantly made use of by painting, architecture, and by every art. Art is thus partly founded on error ; it uses it as an indispensable factor. Art and its craft are but one. Art forms a middle term between the subjective and the real it works by scientific methods to produce illusion ; it makes use of truth, to both delude and charm ; the mind displays all its ingenuity in theoretical morality explains
explain, mathematically, illusions
;
order to catch the eye.
Who
will
say that morality
is
not
an art in the same way, being beautiful and useful at the same time ? Perhaps, likewise, it charms us, while deluding Duty may be but a play of inward colours. In the us. pictures of Claude Lorrain are far-distant perspectives, long vistas between the trees which give the idea of actual an infinity of some centimetres square. In ourinfinity
—
MORALITY INDEPENDENT OF OBLIGATION OR SANCTION.
6o
selves there are likewise similar perspectives vs^hich
may be
As to social life, it rests for the most part on artifice and by artifice we do not mean anything opposed to nature. Not at all nothing deceives us better than nature. There we find the great art that is so only in appearance. ;
;
—
to say, the deception, the innocent conspiracy of
all
against
one. The relations between different beings are a series of illusions ; the eyes, the ears, deceive us why should the
—
Moral philosophy, which tries to formulate the most manifold and complex relations existing between the creatures of nature, is, perhaps, also founded on the greatest number of errors. Many beliefs related by history, which have inspired to self-sacrifice, may be compared with those magnificent mausoleums erected in honour heart alone not deceive us
?
mausoleums are opened, nothing is But their beauty alone is sufficient to justify their existence, and, in passing, you bow before them. You do not ask if the unknown dead is worth these honours you think that he was loved, and that this love is the real object of our respect. It is the same with the of a name.
found
;
If these
they are empty.
;
whom
heroes causes.
urged to great deeds for small
faith often
They are sublime
spendthrifts.
These prodigalities
have undoubtedly been one of the indispensable elements of progress.
The
and for faith, the sceptics There was a time when religion was absolutely necessary. at It is no longer so least for a very great number of people. God has become, and will become more and more, useless. Who knows if it will not be the same with the categorical imperative ? The first religions have been imperative, despotic, hard, inflexible. They were systems of iron discipline. God was a violent and cruel chief, checking his subjects by iron and fire. People bowed and trembled before him. At the present
"will
social necessity for morals
add, can only be provisional.
time
religions
much
in these
are
—
growing milder.
days in hell
?
That
is
Who
believes very
a worn-out scarecrow.
1
MORALITY OF FAITH.
6
Likewise the different conceptions of moralities are softening
down.
Even
disinterestedness will perhaps not always have
the character of social necessity which
it seems to have was remarked that there existed illusions which were provisionally useful. If Decius had not been as superstitious as his soldiers, if Codrus had been a freethinker, Athens and Rome would probably have been
Long ago
to-day.
conquered.
it
Religions which, to the philosopher, are only
a collection of organized and systematized superstitions, are also
made
time, for an epoch.
for a
Their gods are but
various forms of that Greek divinity, Kairos, to serve the
purpose of the moment. Humanity needs to adore something, then to burn that which it has adored. At present the most elevated minds among us adore duty. Will not this latest religion,
others
The
this
last
superstition, disappear like the
?
brass idol to which
their children
is
for us
the
Carthaginians
an object of horror.
sacrificed
Perhaps we from whose
have kept in our hearts some brass idol Already " our dominion our descendants will escape. " a matter of much suspicion in very have become rights The socialists have maintained that there is this century. no right over against pity, and " rights " can hardly be condition of giving them a new and nearly blending them with the principle of Perhaps, by contrary evolution, duty will brotherhood. have to transform itself and to blend itself more and more Do we not with normal and regular development of self. still conceive duty in the image of our imperfect society ? We picture it stained with blood and tears. This still
maintained, except on extension,
barbaric notion, necessary in our days, is perhaps destined Duty will then be equivalent to an epoch to disappear. of transition.
Such are the doubts which a complete scepticism may oppose to this half-scepticism hidden under the faith which invokes social necessities. The question remains undecided.
62
MORALITY INDEPENDENT OF OBLIGATION OR SANCTION.
and
faith
cannot get out of
In
wager.
fact,
accepted by the
—
inward energy wager of Pascal.
otherwise than by a kind of
it
the doctrine of moral faith will,
to
recalls
But
— of duty
freely
by an act of has been said, the
of incertitude decided
this
our mind, as wager can no longer have motives
such as those of Pascal. We are certain, in these days, that God, if he exists, is not at all the vindictive and cruel His existence being which Port Royal imagined him to be. would necessarily be an advantage to me, and I wish for Although it with all my heart, while wagering against it.
my
remains infinitely desirable. my whole life to him. Doubt has long enough been accused of immorality, but the immorality of dogmatic faith can be equally maintained.
improbable
This
To
eyes,
it
which I simply sometimes as impossible. seeking to build up an artificial truth, a merely
believe
conceive
This
in
not a reason for sacrificing
is
is
is
apparent
to assert as real to myself that
possible
as
truth.
At
in
itself,
same
the
the objective truth, thrusting
knowing anything about progress
more
is
or
it
The
it.
doubtful
shutting one's eyes to
greatest
To
the presupposition.
less
is
aside beforehand without
it
solutions,
enemy
—that
movement. Faith from becomes indolence of thought.
arresting the forward
Indifference
One who he adds
is :
even
is
will
not
believe without knowing.
is
may flatly
that point of
often superior to dogmatic faith. " I do not care to know." But
indifferent says
" I
human
which everyone
bring forward, but the problems themselves -view
of
reject not only the
:
believe."
The
first
The
believer wants to
remains at least per-
sincere towards himself, while the other tries to ensnare himself Therefore, whatever may be the question, fectly
doubt
is
better than the perpetual affirmation, better than the
renunciation of
all personal initiative, which is called faith. This kind of intellectual suicide is inexcusable, and that which is still more strange is the pretension to justify it, .as is
constantly done, by invoking moral reasons.
Morality
!
MORALITY OF FAITH.
command
should is
the
mind
63
—
that to search without resting " The dignity
to say, precisely to guard itself against faith.
of believing
!"
you
Man
reply.
history, rested his dignity
upon
has too often,
errors,
and
all
through
truth has at
first
appeared to him to be a lessening of himself. The truth is not always so fair as the dream, but its advantage is that true. In the domain of thought there is nothing more moral than truth and when truth cannot be secured through positive knowledge, nothing is more moral than doubt. it is
;
We
Doubt is dignity of mind. must therefore drive out of ourselves the blind respect for certain principles, for certain
We
beliefs.
everything.
must be able
to question, scrutinize, penetrate
Intelligence should
not cast
down
its
eyes
even before the object of its adoratiori. A tomb in Geneva bears this inscription: "Truth has a face of brass, and those who have loved truth will have faces of brass like her." But, it will be said, if it is irrational to affirm in our thoughts as true that which is doubtful, still it will sometimes have to be affirmed in action. May be but it is always a provisional situation and a conditional affirmation I do this, supposing it to. be my duty, even supposing that I can have an absolute duty. A thousand acts of that kind cannot establish a truth. A great number of martyrs have made Christianity triumph a little reason may be sufficient to overthrow it. Besides, how much humanity would gain if all self-sacrifice were done out of regard for science, and not for faith if one died not to defend a belief, but to discover a truth, however small it might be. That was what Empedocles and Pliny did, and what in ;
:
;
—
our time
many faith,
men
of science, physicians, explorers do.
How
were lost of old to assert objects of an unsound which might have been utilized for humanity and.
lives
science
MORALITY INDEPENDENT OF OBLIGATION OR SANCTION.
64
III.
MORALITY OF DOUBT.
We
have seen the certitude of duty, as admitted by Kant, resolve itself into faith, even with the followers of Kant, and faith itself become a doubt which will not declare itself. Very well there remains a third attitude of mind, this time ;
absolutely sincere with itself
and with others it consists in and the morality of faith founding morality partly on the ;
replacing the morality of certitude
by the morality of doubt
—
in
very consciousness of our metaphysical ignorance, joined to
which we have learned from positive science. This attitude of mind has lately been analyzed and put forward as the best (see " La Critique des Systemes de that
Morale," par A. Fouillee, conclusion and preface).
The author of " 1' Id^e Moderne du Droit,'' and of the " Critique des Systemes de Morale Contemporaine," has one synthesis the legitimate
tried to unite in
results of the
philosophy of evolution and of the philosophy of criticism. Its point of
deny,
experimental departure, which no doctrine can
the fact that
is
rightly interpreted,
we have
first
of right and the duty of justice. What, in reality, of consciousness in
its
widest sense, and what
It realizes itself, realizes the
the whole world character
;
in
This
consciousness.
according to him, the
is,
fact,
foundation
is
the object
is its
limit ?
consciousness of others, realizes
consequence
and an universal range
it
";
has both " an individual it
does not assume
its
own consciousness without assuming the consciousness of others similar to its own it does not grasp itself but in association with others. By this very fact, consciousness " comprehends its own limitation, its own relativity, as a ;
means of knowledge," " either
for
it
cannot completely explain
itself,
own
nature as a thinking subject, or the nature of the object which it realizes, or the transition of the subjective to
its
the objective."
From
this springs the principle of
the
MORALITY OF DOUBT. "relativity
of knowledge^'' which
is
65
moral
of a
import
hitherto disregarded. " true positivist, like a true critic
A and a true sceptic, must keep in the depth of his mind a what do T know T and a 'perhaps.' He must not assert that science or his brain is adequate to comprehend reality, but only that they are adequate to comprehend reality so far as it is known. Our very experience teaches us that our mind is not made '
so as to always represent
dently of that object,
as felt
and
things as they are, indepen-
all
On
mind
pictured,
is
the one hand, therefore, the
not conceived as capable of
being entirely penetrated by science, or by the feeling and thinking subject
;
on the other hand, the
subject
is,
perhaps,
in his turn, not wholly penetrable to himself."
This principle of the
of right, as of the duty of justice. is,
knowledge, built up
relativity of all
by the ideas of our consciousness,
is
the preliminary condition
In
fact,
such a principle
in the first place, " limitative
egoism," which
is
intolerant
strictive of practical
and restrictive of theoretical dogmatism moreover, it is " re;
egoism," which
is injustice.
To make
of one's egoism and of one's self an absolute formula
is
to
dogmatize in action as well as in thought it is to act as if one possessed the absolute formula of being ; it is as much " The world mechanically knowable is all ; force as to say ;
:
is
all; self-interest is all.
in action,
and
Injustice, therefore,
hurtful to others
Now,
is
absolutism
there will always
remain something which cannot be explained mechanically, if it were only movement and sensation, the element of consciousness.
Joined to
all
the other considerations, the
idea of that something irreducible which constitutes
our
knowledge gained by means of our senses (connaissance sensible), also imposes on us rationally the limitation of our motives derived from the consciousness, while restricting the
senses (mobiles sensibles), and that with regard to others, and with regard to everything. Solipsism, as the English say, is no more to be admitted in morality than in meta-
F
;
MORALITY INDEPENDENT OF OBLIGATION OR SANCTION.
66
physics, although
it is,
perhaps, logically irrefutable in both
spheres."
This doctrine, we must own, contains a great deal of
But
truth.
it is
necessary to exactly calculate to what point
this morality leads us,
and
also
where
it
leaves us.
It is
an
attempt to found a primary equivalent to obligation upon doubt itself, or at least upon the relativity of human knowledge,
and
to rid the assertion of moral justice of a certain
metaphysical scepticism.
In the
that the practical formula of
first
doubt
is
place,
we must agree
really abstinence.
It
from action in general, not only from injustice, that All action is an complete doubt would have to abstain. it is also a kind of choice, of election. While affirmation acting, I always seize something from the midst of the metaphysical mist, from the thick cloud which envelopes the is
;
world and myself. The perfect equilibrium of doubt is, therefore, rather an ideal than a real state an almost imper-
—
ceptible
moment
of transition.
If there
is
no true morality
but in action, and if to abstain is still to act, that is, by this very reason, departure from equilibrium. Besides, metaphysi-
most concrete cases not an entire and thorough mind by different possibilities which counterbalance one another ; it most often envelopes a vague belief, which is unconscious of itself, or, as M. Fouillde owns, at least one or more hypotheses hence it can have a practical influence. Man, placed between the different hypotheses concerning the world, has cal
doubt is
in
doubt, a perfect equivalent created in the
always some instinctive preference for a certain one among them; he does not remain hanging in the f-rioyj] of Pyrrho he chooses according to his own habits of thought. These vary in different individuals, according to their creeds and hopes, not according to their doubts.
—
But,
will
be
said, there is in all sincere
doubt a precise the consciousness of our ignorance of the foundation of things ; it is the conception of a simply
and
it
lasting
element
possible, reality,
;
it is
which goes beyond our thought, a wholly
— MORALITY OF DOUBT. negative
and
restrictive
67
conception, being nevertheless of
sovereign importance in restricting our "intellectual pride."
Quite so
;
but the question
is
to
know
if this
conception
same importance in restricting our conduct. In the first place, be it noted that this conception could not produce an imperative, and this is shown by the very author of the theory which we are examining. That which is in itself indeterminable cannot determine and regulate conduct an order and a rule are a by a law which commands determination. The unknowable cannot even limit conduct a limitative principle, as such, in a categorical manner cannot have an absolute character at least not unless an absolute behind the limit be presupposed. But let us go further. Would doubt, with regard to the unknowable, in itself axid in so fat as it is a mere suspension of judgment, be able to limit conduct in any way ? A limit cannot, it seems, have practical influence on us as long as we move inside this limit. Now, we are unable to move outThe glass of a bowl has no direct effect side phenomena. on the conduct of the fish, so long as the fish does not Even the future hurt itself against the side of the bowl. has influence on me only in two ways firstly, in so far as I picture\t to myself in my mind in pure supposition; secondly, in so far as by my acts I produce, or help to produce, 01 So long as the future is not, believe to produce, the future. in some form or other, represented in my imagination, it remains strange to me, and cannot in any way modify my It is in the same way necessary, we believe conduct. and M. Fouillde undoubtedly admits this also that, if the unknowable is to have a positive and determined effect on our conduct, it should not only be conceived as possible, but be represented under some form or other in its relation to my act, and under forms which do not contradict is
of the
;
;
—
:
—
It is, moreover, necessary that I or destroy each other. imagine I can exercise some influence on the unknow-
able and
its
realization
;
in short,
it
is
necessary that
it
68
MORALITY INDEPENDENT OF OBLIGATION OR SANCTION.
becomes, as M. Fouill^e says, an "ideal" more or less determinable for me, a future which I am more or less able to realize. The idea of a moral rule, even of a restrictive one, presupposes,
therefore, as positive principle, not the
mere
'Cat,
conception
representation of
nature
and,
;
influence
unknowable, but a an imaginary determination of its
possibility of the
nature,
its
presupposes the belief in a possible in the it, and on its realization
lastly, it
of the will on
And once
shown that these are so and right even included appears metaphysically hypothetical, considerations drawn
future.*
many
—
or
clearly
is
it
—
hypotheses, morality
justice
from positive science, evolution, happiness,
utility, etc.,
being
omitted.
The
theory of doubt as limiting egoism corresponds to a
somewhat subtle point which thought and without stopping
mine tive
make room
this point, to
ignorance,
Surely
at.
it
is
in
pass by
act
important
to
morality for
deter-
our posi-
our positive doubt, and, so to speak, for
This M. Fouillde has our incertitude. While waiting till he has developed the positive part of his doctrine, we must allow that he has logically reduced Kant, we have the idea of the imperative to its true value. his followers raised it to an said, saw in it a certainty now it is reduced to a formula of our doubt, object of faith to a limitation of our conduct by a limitation of our thought. After having been an imperative order, the unknowable is This interrogation presents nothing but an interrogation. but the answer which each one of itself to each one of us us can give to it varies with individuals, and is left to their own initiative. One remembers the plank of safety of which Cicero speaks, upon which a man walks trying Metaphysical doubt alone would be of to save himself. the certainty of
done.
;
;
;
little
use to prevent
me
taking,
if I
can, the place of that
" * Besides, the author of the Critique des Systteies de Morale himself makes of the ideal " a hypothetical formula of the unknowable" '
'
—an ideal which
itself
can only have a conditional influence.
MORALITY OF DOUBT.
69
The unknowable,
in the midst of which we Hve and and which envelopes us, so to speak, intellectually, is very much like the empty space which surrounds us physically. Now, the empty space means for us absolute freedom of direction. It can only act on us and rule our course by the bodies it contains, which are revealed to us by our senses. For him who believes the depth of things to be inaccessible
man.
breathe,
to our thought
our
to
acts.
in relation to
supreme
it
will
always be doubtful
if it
be accessible
The supreme unknowable can, therefore, our own will, remain without contradiction
indifference,
long
as
as
it
remains
for
our
mere object of doubt and of suspension of
intelligence a
judgment.
The
theory sketched in the " Critique des Systemes de
Morale"
will
when
author shall have succeeded in drawing, as he
its
only
become
sufficiently
clear
intends to do, a restrictive rule, and, above
and all,
fruitful
a "per-
—
suasive ideal " not out of our doubts about the unknowable (mere " preliminary condition " of morality), but out of our
and out of " the known depth of human According to his own words, we must be make the moral ideal "immanent," and to show that
knowledge
itself,
consciousness."
able to it is
derived from experience
That
is,
itself.
moreover, what he already
tries to
the important pages of his work (Preface,
In his opinion, there
exists,
of the intelligence, a kind
and
justifies
altruism
in
of
the
in
do
in
one of
ix.).
very constitution
which explains There is, he says,
altruism,
conduct.
an intellectual disinterestedaltruism, which makes us able to understand others to put ourselves in their place ; to put ourselves into them by an
"intellectual
—
ness,
thought.
Consciousness, projecting
other beings, and into the whole,
is
itself in this
way
into
joined to others, and to
is at the same time a force." a sort of " intellectual altruism "
the whole, by an idea, which
We does
believe, in fact, that exist
;
only, in our opinion, this disinterestedness of
70
MORALITY INDEPENDENT OF OBLIGATION OR SANCTION.
the intelligence
is
instead of being
only one of the aspects of moral altruism,
its
place,
and enter
must, above feeling
is
To be
main principle.
the consciousness of others well
—
to
able to conceive
put ourselves in their
into their consciousness, so to speak
all,
be in sympathy with them
;
the germ of the extension of consciousness.
understand
— we
sympathy of
To
understand others is to feel ourselves in harmony with others. This communicability is
really to feel
;
to
of emotions and of thoughts side, is
a
phenomenon
to a great extent
which life
is
that
—which, on
by the fecundity of
almost in direct ratio to
we
will
its
of nervous contagion
demand
its
life,
psychological
—
is
explained
the expansion of
intensity.
the principle of morality.
It is
from
—
FIRST
BOOK.
ON THE MOTIVE FORCE OF MORALITY FROM A SCIENTIFIC POINT OF VIEW.
FIRST
EQUIVALENTS OF DUTY.
CHAPTER Intensity of Life
By no means do we
is
I.
the Motive Force of Action.
reject the part of metaphysical specula-
tion in moral philosophy, provided that
it
presents itself as
and the importance of it we ourselves will show later on. But a strict method obliges us to examine first what a moral philosophy may be which is founded exclusively on facts, and which in consequence does not start from an i priori thesis, nor from an a priori law, which itself would be a metaphysical thesis. The question which we have to examine is Which is the point of departure and the goal, and what is the exact domain of science in moral philosophy ? A moral philosophy which only invokes facts cannot it
really
is
i.e.,
as speculation,
:
from the very beginning represent to the individual, as spring of action, the
good
the happiness of society
is
or
the happiness of
first
society, for
often in opposition to that of
In these cases of opposition social happiness, as such, can only become for the individual a thoughtout end by virtue of pure disinterestedness ; but it is the individual.
impossible to prove this pure disinterestedness as fact,
and
its
versy;
existence has always
been a subject of contro-
Besides, scientific morality, in order not to include
MORALITY INDEPENDENT OF OBLIGATION OR SANCTION.
72
from first
its
very beginning an inverifiable postulate, must be It should preoccupy itself with the
individualistic.
destiny of society only in so far as
The
that of the individual.
it
more or
less includes
mistake of utilitarians
first
Stuart Mill, and even of evolutionists, has been to confuse the social aspect and the individualistic aspect of like
the moral problem. It
is
important to add that an individualistic morality, facts, is not the negation of a metaphysical
founded on
or religious morality, founded, for example,
personal ideal
it
;
does not exclude
constructed in a different
sphere.
this latter It
is
a
on some im-
—
it is
simply
small house,
Tower of Babel. It does not in the Tower of Babel raising itself to heaven, if it can. Nay, more who knows if the small house will not in the end need shelter itself under the shadow of the tower? Therefore we will not try either to deny or to built at the foot of the least prevent the
;
exclude any of the ends put forward as desirable by metaphysicians
;
but we
of the desirable, and
what
in reality
is
will at
we
present leave alone the notion
will limit ourselves to first
speculation into moral philosophy
determine
first
how
precisely
showing
Before introducing metaphysical
desired*
conception of morality can go.
it is,
in fact, essential to
an exclusively scientific This is what we now pro-
far
pose to do.
The ends pursued
by mankind and by all living However, in the same everywhere shows characters in common, and of in reality
creatures are extremely numerous.
way as
life
a similar type of organization, it is probable that the ends sought by different individuals can be in reality more or less This unique and profound goal of action led back to unity. could not be the good a vague conception, which, when
—
one wants
to determine
it,
dissolves in metaphysical hypo-
* On the distinction of the desired and desirable see our " English Contemporary Moral Philosophy," second edition, part ii., " De la
M6thode Morale."
INTENSITY OF LIFE theses
IS
THE MOTIVE FORCE OF ACTION.
— nor duty, which none
as a primitive
and
73
the more appears to science
irreducible principle
;
nor, perhaps, hap-
piness in the fullest meaning of the word, which Volney has called an object of luxury,
presupposes, moreover,
a
and the conception of which
very advanced development of the
intelligent being.
What, then,
When
a
will
be the natural aim of human actions
marksman has
a target, one he has made
sees, in
?
for a long time practised shooting at
looking at the numerous holes which
in the piece of cardboard, that these holes are
distributed pretty uniformly round the white at which he
aimed. Not one of these balls, perhaps, will have hit the geometrical centre of the circle of the target, and some will
be grouped round this centre, according to a very regular law, which Qudtelet has ascertained and named "the binomial law."
Even without knowing this law, one would not be deceived by the mere aspect of the holes one would put a finger in the centre of the place where these holes are most frequent, and one would say " That is the point of the target aimed at." This searching for the point aimed at by the marksman may be compared to that which the purely positive ;
:
science of morals undertakes
when
it
endeavours to deter-
mine the ordinary aim of human conduct. Which is the target constantly aimed at by humanity, and which must also have been the target for
man
all
human
beings, for to-day
no longer regarded by science as a being separate from the rest of the world, and the laws of life are the same, from the top downwards, on the ladder of animal life ? is
Where
is
the centre of the universal effort of beings towards
which the strokes of the great hazard of things have been directed, perhaps without one perfectly exact stroke, without the aim having ever been fully attained ? According to the " Hedonists," the natural direction of every act would be the minimum of pain and the maximum of pleasure
;
in
its
evolution " conscious
the line of the least suffering."
life
always follows
Hardly anyone can dispute
;;
74
MORALITY INDEPENDENT OF OBLIGATION OR SANCTION.
our desire, and we, for our part, admit it is too narrow, for it can only be applied to the conscious and more or less voluntary acts, and not to the unconscious and automatic acts, which are simply this direction of
but the preceding definition
accomplished according to the line of the least resistance. Now, to believe that most of our movements spring from consciousness, and that a scientific analysis of the springs of
conduct has only to reckon with conscious motives, would For Dr. undoubtedly mean being dupe of an illusion. Maudsley and Professor Huxley consciousness is, in life, but
an epi-phenomenon, in the absence of which everything would go on in the same way. Without wishing to solve, or even to raise, this question which in England, as well as in France, is a great point of controversy we must own that
—
—
consciousness embraces a rather restricted portion of
and
action.
Even those
ness have generally their beginning and instincts
and
reflex
life
acts achieved in full consciousfirst
dumb
origin in
Consciousness
movements.
is,
therefore,
only a luminous point in the great obscure sphere of life it is a small lens, gathering in bundles some rays of the sun,
and imagining
too
readily
very focus from which the rays of action, before
that
focus
its
the
is
The natural spring
start.
appearing in consciousness, must have
already acted from underneath in the obscure region of the
The constant end of action must primarily have been a constant cause of more or less unconscious movements. In reality, the ends are but habitual motive causes become conscious of themselves. Every movement of the will has begun by being a spontaneous movement blindly executed because it presented less resistance. Every conscious desire, therefore, has first been an instinct. The
instincts.
sphere of finality coincides, at least in sphere of causality (even
if,
regards finality as primitive). end, the
constant
target,
centre, with the
The problem this
:
What
is
the
becomes, therefore, problem What is the
of action
from another point of view,
its
with the metaphysicians, one
?
:
— INTENSITY OF LIFE
IS
THE MOTIVE FORCE OF ACTION.
constant cause of action
aimed
circle of life the point
In the
?
75
at blends with the very point
from which the action
springs.
We
believe
an
that
exclusively
morality
scientific
must, to be complete, admit that the pursuit of pleasure
only
consequence of the instinctive
the
itself
and
maintain
enlarge
The aim
life.
determines every conscious action
produces every unconscious action. life
in
its
forms.
of
its
most intense and,
From
the
first
mother, to the
ment of the
at the
in
the
then,
is,
time,
its
embryo
life
fact,
which itself
most varied
in the
womb
convulsion of old age, every move-
This life in its evolution. from another point of view,
creature has, as cause,
universal cause of our acts its
It
same
bound of
last
which,
also the cause
is
is
to
effort
is,
constant effect and end.
The
preceding analysis
agrees
in
result with
its
the
analysis of the evolutionist school, which we will not reproduce here (see our " Morale Anglaise Contemporaine,''
second
edition).
as the motive underlying all our actions, is even admitted by the mystics, for they generally suppose a prolongation of existence beyond this world ; and timeless Life,
existence
itself is
The tendency .to
but
life
not only for man, but for for the
last
abstract of
concentrated in a punctum stans.
persist in life
atom of ether
life.
is
all living ;
the necessary law of creatures
for force is
This tendency
is
—
life,
perhaps even
probably only an
undoubtedly, as
were,
it
the residuum of the universal consciousnesss, the more so
because It
is,
it
goes beyond and envelopes consciousness
therefore, both the
most radical of
realities
itself-
and the
inevitable ideal.
The
solely and systemapart of morality founded the on positive facts may be thus defined science which has for object all the means of preserving and enlarging material and intellectual life. The supreme tically
:
laws of this morality will be identical with the deepest laws
MORALITY INDEPENDENT OF OBLIGATION OR SANCTION.
76
of life
itself,
and in some of its most general theorems, this con-
ception of morality will be of value for
creatures.
all living
be said that the means of preserving physical life belong to hygiene more than to morality, we answer that temperance, which for a long time has been placed among the virtues, is practically an application of hygiene; and that, moreover, an exclusively scientific conception of If
it
morality can, in
its
physical aspect, oblivious of
all
other
from an enlarged hygiene. If we are asked what to increase the intensity of life means, we reply that it is to enlarge the range of activity under all its forms (in such a measure as is compatible with the renewal of force).
aspects, hardly differ
The
inferior creatures
only in a certain direction,
act
and sink into absolute inertia as, for example, the hunting dog, which goes to sleep until the after
which they
very
moment when he
will
human
strict limits
is
hunt.
The
activity
rests
is,
of necessity of
periods of lying fallow. action
again begin to
by variety of action, by variety of production. The aim pursued in
the culture of the
;
on the contrary,
superior being, like a field
rest
To
therefore, the reduction to
what might be called the
act
is
to live
to increase the fire of inward
would
life.
;
to increase
The
worst of
from that point of view, laziness, inertia. The moral ideal will be activity in all its variety of maniat least, of those which do not contradict each festations other, or which do not produce a permanent loss of forceTo take an example thought is one of the principal forms vices
be,
—
:
of
human
activity,
not, as Aristotle believed, because thought would be action when pure and detached from all matter (an unverifiable hypothesis), but because thought is,
so to
speak, condensed action
and Hfe
at its
maximum
development. It is
the
same with
love.
After having stated in very general terms the foundations of a moral philosophy of life, let us see what place it allows
—
:
INTENSITY OF LIFE within
IS
THE MOTIVE FORCE OF ACTION.
77
range to hedonism, or to the moral philosophy of
its
pleasure.
Pleasure
is
a state of consciousness which, according to
psychologists
'
and
physiologists,
connected
is
an
with
or intellectual), from which it follows that the precept, " Persistently increase the inten-
increase of
life
(physical
of your life," will finally be confounded with this " Persistently increase the intensity of your pleasure."
sity
Hedonism, and more
may
therefore,
stand, but in the second place,
consequence than as principle.
as
" Pleasure
the
All
by which people can be moved." Let us understand one another. There are two kinds of pleasure. At one time pleasure corresponds with a particular and superficial form English
moralists
say,
only lever
the
is
at another ; connected with the very root of that activity (the In the one pleasure of living, of willing, of thinking, etc.).
of activity (the pleasure of eating, drinking, etc.)
time
it is
case, is it
it
is
purely a pleasure of the senses
;
in the other,
it
more deeply vital, more independent of exterior object.s The utilitarians is one with the very consciousness of life.
or the hedonists take too great a delight in considering the first
sort of pleasure
tance.
the other kind has a greater impor-
;
One does not always
particiilar pleasure
Sometimes we
—limited
exterior to the act
act for the pleasure of acting
the pleasure of living
we think
;
is
used.
If its expenditure is
in us
we
;
a
itself.
for
live
for the pleasure of thinking.
accumulated force which demands to be impeded, this force becomes
There
desire or aversion if it is
act with the view of seeking
and
:
if
opposed, there
the desire is
pain.
is satisfied,
But
it
there
is
pleasure;
does not follow from
this that the stored-up activity unfolds itself solely /(7r the
sake of pleasure
and expresses creatures
— with
itself in
pleasure as motive. activity
because
it
unfolds
Life is
In
life.
much more than Before all we must Hve
pleasure accompanies,
vokes, the search after life.
ment comes
after.
it ;
all
pro--
enjoy-
MORALITY INDEPENDENT OF OBLIGATION OR SANCTION.
yS
For a long time it was believed that the organ created the it was also believed that the pleasure created the
function
;
function.
"A
creature goes," said Epicurus,
"where
his
These words, according to modern science, contain a very incomplete truth, and are mingled with error. In the beginning the creature did not possess any organ already complete neither did he possess, in any way, He himself, by action, has a fully-developed pleasure. created his organ and his pleasure. The pleasure, as well Moreover, as the organ, proceeds from the function. afterwards, like the organ itself, it reacts on the function. Finally, one acts in such-and-such a way because one has an organ developed after such a fashion, and because one finds pleasure in going in such a direction. But the pleasure does not come first ; that which is first and last is pleasure calls him."
;
the function,
is life.
superior to her
;
if
to
an
inferior
an impulse which
nature
is,
is
it is
not
foreign or
so to speak, self-moved
and
any the more necessary to appeal and particular motive, such as any special
self-governed, neither to
for the direction of nature,
If,
appeal
necessary to
is it
pleasure.
The
we can agree with the Hedonists some vague Pleasure and pain might be considered pleasure or pain. as the very principle of consciousness on the other hand, is
point on which
that
consciousness could not exist without
;
consciousness
the lever necessary to produce all action other than purely reflex action. The English theory is,
therefore, true
is
in
this
sense, that every voluntary action,
being, so to speak, always obliged to pass through consciousness, necessarily becomes impressed with either a pleasant
To act and react is always to moreover, always to desire or to
or an unpleasant character. enjoy or to suffer
;
it
is,
fear.
But
this pleasant or
sufficient to
unpleasant character of action
completely explain
is not Enjoyment, instead of
it.
being the deliberate end of action,
is
often, like conscious-
INTENSITY OF LIFE
IS
THE MOTIVE FORCE OF ACTION.
79
ness
itself, only an attribute of it. Action springs naturally from the working of life, which is, to a considerable extent, unconscious. It enters immediately into the domain of consciousness and enjoyment, but it does not spring from it. (The tendency of the creature to continue in existence is
at the root of all desire,
minate
desire.
space, ignores
A
>
body
without forming in
direction,
its
speed, ready to transform
and
yet
passes.
It is
thus that
it
life
its
heat,
and even
acquired force, and of the
its activity, is
tion
which
this
fully
being
open
known, one can predict the will
feel itself
to
direc-
inwardly obliged to
an astronomer could predict the course of merely by the knowledge of its bulk, its speed, and It is as if
take.
a
once
If the
it.
in a being, having different issues
life
it
desire or fear, pain or
primitive directions in which evolution has flung intensity of
into
medium through which
becomes
pleasure, precisely in virtue of
a deter-
possesses an acquired
itself into
according to the resistant
light,
itself
motion, carried on through
in
star
of the action of the other stars.
One sees now the only position which can be taken up by a science of morals without metaphysics in the question of the moral end, independent of
the hypotheses which Given on the one hand sphere of instincts, habits, and dumb all
metaphysics could add later on. the
unconscious
on the other hand the conscious sphere of will, morality is placed on the of these two spheres. It is the only science thus
perceptions,
reasoning and of thoughtful limit
having for
its
facts purely
object neither facts purely unconscious nor It must, therefore, search for a
conscious.
tendency which should be common to these two orders of facts, and which might be able to connect the two spheres. Classical psychology was always restricted to conscious phenomena, leaving alone the study of pure mechanism. It was the same with classical moral philosophy. But both supposed it to be proved that mechanical life does not act
MORALITY INDEPENDENT OF OBLIGATION OR SANCTION.
8o
upon the conscious region of mind give rise sometimes in that region to
To suppose
disturbances.
(or thought),
more or
less
does not
inexpHcable
that the independence of the
conscious with regard to the unconscious was thus demonstrated, was to begin with a postulate which is sanctioned
We
believe that, in order to avoid this postumorality must look for a spring of action which should be able to work at the same time in the two spheres, and move in us both the unconscious and the
by nothing. late,
scientific
conscious being.
The
object of the science of morals
is |
produced by the mere effort of life, springs incessantly from the unconscious depths of being, and how, next, to enter into the domain of consciousness action may be weakened in this new sphere, often even be suspended for example, when there is struggle between to
show how
action,
;
;
the instinct of
a
life
and such or such a
belief in the rational
may furnish may become
In that case, the sphere of consciousness
order.
new source
of actions, which in their turn
and thus
re-enter the unconundergo numberless Instinct deviates in becoming consciousness alterations. and thought ; thought deviates in becoming action and the Moral science has to reckon with all germ of instinct. It looks for the meeting point where these deviations. the two great forces of our being, instinct and reason, touch and mutually transform themselves without ceasing. Moral science has to study the action of these two forces on each other, to regulate the double influence of instinct on thought, of thought and of mind on instinctive and reflex actions. We shall see how life, by becoming conscious of itself, and without rationally contradicting itself, may give rise to an indefinite variety of motives derived from it. The universal instinct of life now uncon-
principles of habit or instincts,
scious depth of the creature, there to
scious,
now
shall see
positive
it
end
conscious
—
—
in the different aspects in
which we
clothed, supplies moral science with the only ;
which, moreover, does not
mean that no other
j
1
I
— 1;
INTENSITY OF LIFE end
facts, let
that
is,
it
is
8
adequate to every
The moral
philosophy, founded on be said once more, can but " show " one thing
that
reality.
life
among
increase
THE MOTIVE FORCE OF ACTION.
or that our experience
is possible,
imaginable
IS
has a tendency to maintain beings,
all
itself,
and to
unconsciously, and later
first
with the help of spontaneous and thinking consciousness that
the desire of
with
all
and universal form of
thus, in fact, the primitive
life is
every good thing which life
is
desired.
It
does not follow that
absolutely exhausts the idea of the desirable,
the metaphysical, and even mystical, notions which
can be attached to
it.
It is
a reserved question, which will
no longer be properly an object of of metaphysical hypothesis.
It is
positive aiifirmation, but important for science to
mark the exact point of separation of the
certain
and the
uncertain, in moral philosophy as well as in other branches
of science.
Certitude has never injured speculation, nor
even dreams
;
injured the injured
neither has the knowledge of the real facts
impulse towards the
metaphysics.
The
ideal,
reaper,
nor has science
carefully
gathering
barn sheaves which he has himself collected and counted, has never prevented the sower going round with open hands, his eyes fixed on far-off the known harvests, throwing out to the winds the present together into
—so
his
—
as to see a future germinate
hopes
which he knows
not, but
for.
CHAPTER
II.
The Highest Intensity of Life has for
its
Necessary
Correlative the Greatest Expansion.
From
the physiological point of view, existence and
life
imply nutrition, consequently appropriation, transformation Life is a kind of gravitafor itself of the forces of nature. But a being always needs to accumulate a tion upon itself. G
— MORALITY INDEPENDENT OF OBLIGATION OR SANCTION.
82
surplus of force to ensure the
amount necessary
to maintain
a very law of nature. What will become of this surplus of force which is accumulated by every healthy being, of this superabundance which nature succeeds in Thrift
life.
producing In the
is
?
place,
first
it
be able
will
to
expend
itself in
"Repro" and of nutrition of Haeckel, an excess duction," says is growth, in consequence of which a part of the individual
generation,
which
is
simply a case of nutrition.
independent in everything " (" Morphologic," In the elementary cellule generation takes the form of simple division. Later, a kind of distribution of labour takes place, and reproduction becomes a special
is
created
ii.
1 6).
by the germ-cells ; this is sporogony. two cells one ovular, the other spermatic There unite and blend together to form a new individual. The is nothing mysterious in this conjunction of two cells. muscular tissue and the nervous tissue result, to a great extent, from these cellular fusions. Nevertheless, with this sexual generation or amphigony begins, we may say, a new moral phase for the world. The individual organism ceases
function, carried out
—
Finally, later,
centre of gravity changes its place by change its place more and more. of capital importance in moral life. If against
to be isolated,
degrees,
and
Sexuality
it
is
all possibility
among
the
its
will
a non-sexual generation had been prevalent
animal
beings, society
species,
would hardly
since that spinsters,
and
finally
among human
was noticed long bachelors, and eunuchs fall into the exist.
It
more selfish. Their centre has always remained in the depths of themselves without ever fluc-
habit of being
Children also are selfish ; they do not yet possess a surplus of life to pour forth from themselves ; it is about the period of puberty that their characters transform themtuating.
selves.
The young man
is
full
of enthusiasm
for every sacrifice because, in point of fact,
that
he should
sacrifice
it
;
he
is
ready
necessary
is
—that
something of himself
he
THE HIGHEST INTENSITY OF
LIFE.
should diminish himself to a certain extent of
to live only for himself.
life
The
also that of generosity.
The
;
83 he
is
too
full
period of generation
is
old man, on the contrary,
is
become selfish again. People who are ill have the same tendency. Each time that the fount of life is diminished a need is felt in the whole of one's being to save One hesitates to allow one drop to spare one's self. often inclined to
—
of internal sap to
The
filter
through.
of generation
first effect
is
to
produce a grouping of
organisms, to create the family, and, through the family, to create society
most evident seen,
is
;
but this
is
The
effects.
only one of
its
most
sexual instinct, as
visible
and
we have
just
a superior but particular form of the general need
Now, this need, symptom of a surplus of does not only act on the special organs of generation it acts on the whole organism. It exercises a kind of pressure on our being, the different forms of which we are going to enumerate. I. Intellectual Fecundity. It is not without reason that of fecundity.
force,
—
—
the works of a thinker have been
The his
artist also
inmost
self,
is,
by an inward
compared
to his children.
force, driven to cast forth
to give us of his innermost, like Musset's
pelican.
Let
be added that
it
this fecundity is
somewhat
The organism
tion to physical generation.
in opposi-
cannot, without
accomplish this double expenditure. It seems animal species also, physical fecundity decreases Very great geniuses with the development of the brain. have generally had children only under the average, whose suffering,
that, in the
These geniuses undoubtedly minds of the human race, but blood could not mingle with that of mankind.
race was soon exterminated. still
live
their
by
their ideas in the
Intellectual fecundity also admits of a kind of debauchery.
The mind can be
abused.
The young man
exhausted for the whole of his intellectual labour.
life
The American
is sometimes by premature excess of
girl
may, in the same
;
MORALITY INDEPENDENT OF OBLIGATION OR SANCTION.
84
way, imperil her future maternity, or the fate of the generawhich she will bring into the world. It is the duty of
tion
morality to restrain here, as elsewhere, the instinct of pro-
As a general rule, we may say that the expenditure should only be an excitation and not an exhaustion of life. duction.
Be
that as
it
may, the need of intellectual fecundity, more
even than of sexual fecundity, deeply modifies the condiThought, in fact, is impersonal tions of life in humanity.
and
disinterested.
—
Sensibility Fecundity of Emotion and of Sensibility. must be exercised as well as intelligence. Of ourselves, we are not sufficient for ourselves. We have more tears than are wanted for our own sufferings, more joys in reserve than our own happiness would justify. We really need to go out of ourselves to others we want to multiply ourselves by communion of thoughts and sentiments. Hence the kind of unrest in a too solitary creature, an 2.
;
If, for instance, we feel some artistic we would rather not enjoy it alone. We like know that we exist, feel, suffer, love. We would
unsatisfied desire.
pleasure,
others to
like to tear the veil of individuality. is far
from our thought.
Vanity ?
No
;
It is rather the antithesis of
vanity
egoism.
Very
inferior pleasures are sometimes selfish. If there is only one cake, the child wants to be the only one to eat it. But the true artist does not wish to be alone in seeing some-
thing beautiful, in discovering something true, in feeling a
generous sentiment.*
There is in these higher pleasures a force of expansion, ever ready to burst the narrow shell of self.
we
In face of these we are not sufficient to ourselves made to transfer them, like the vibrating atom
are only
of ether transfers from place to place the sideral *
One
beam
has, however, here to distinguish
of
between the enjoyment of and the enjoyment of the amatem- in art, which can be narrow and selfish, because it is always barren. See our " Problems of Contemporary the artist
—which
^Esthetics.''
is
always
fruitful,
consequently generous
—
THE HIGHEST INTENSITY OF which traverses
light
momentary
the
it,
and of which
it
LIFE.
85
retains nothing but
thrill.
also, we have to avoid an exaggerated expansion a kind of altruistic debauchery. There are people, although rare, who have lived too much for others, who
Yet here,
of
life,
have not retained enough of themselves; the English moralists blame these with some reason. Is it quite certain that a great man always has the right to risk his life to save that of an imbecile? The woman a mother ^who forgets
—
—
herself too is
much may,
in advance,
bearing to a sickly and ailing
who submits
life.
condemn the child she The father of a family
himself and his family to daily privations in
order to leave the children some small competency will, in the end, really only succeed in leaving a small sum to beings ill-born,
and without value
to the species.
—
of Will. We need to bring forth and to impress the form of our activity upon the world. Action has become a necessity for the greater part of mankind. J. Fecundity
The most
constant and the most regular form of action is work, with the attention which it demands. The savage is incapable of true work all the more incapable as he is more degraded. These organisms among us which are the
—
still
living fragments of ancient
man — the
criminals
generally, as a distinctive feature, a horror of work.
do not in
is,
get tired of doing nothing.
Known
They
say that ennui
—
of fecundity of will. The " the spleen " is the most active
man, a sign of superiority
nation which has
We may
—have
pation.
Work
will in time become more and more necessary mankind. Now, work is at the same time the most economical and the most moral phenomenon, in which egoism and altruism are most easily reconciled. To work is to produce, and to produce is to be useful both to one's self and to others. Work can only become dangerous by its accumulation in the form of capital ; it may then take a frankly selfish character, and, by virtue of an inherent con-
for
;
MORALITY INDEPENDENT OF OBLIGATION OR SANCTION.
86
tradiction,
may tend
idleness which
to
own suppression by
its
But, in
allows.
it
its
the very
living form,
work
is
belongs to the domain of social laws to prevent the bad results of the accumulation of work excess of idleness for oneself and excess of power over others as always good.
It
—
—
which are too powerful. It is necessary for us to will and work, not only for ourWe want to help others, to give selves, but also for others. toilsomely draws humanity along ; which a lift to the coach One of the inferior forms of in any case, we buzz round it. one takes care to
isolate batteries
need is " ambition," which must be recognised, not merely as a desire for honours and for fame, but as a thing which is also and before all else a need of action or of speech, an abundance of life under its rather coarse form of motive power, of material activity, of nervous tension. Certain characters have, above all, this fecundity of will They upset the surface of the for example, Napoleon I. this
world,
with the object of impressing their
mark upon
to substitute their will for that of others,
They want
they possess a poor sensibility
—an
it.
but
intelligence incapable of
word; an intelligence which does not think for the sake of thinking, and which they make the passive Others, on the contrary, instrument of their ambition. have a highly-developed sensibility, like women (who have creating, in the largest sense of the
which
is
worth nothing in
itself,
played so great a part in
founding of morality)
;
human
but
in
evolution and in
the
and
will
these intelligence
are too often lacking. Finally, life has
,
nutrition tion
and
and
two aspects. According to the one, it is according to the other, produc-
assimilation
to give out
;
that
physiologically
;
it
;
The more
fecundity. is is
its
it
takes
in,
the
Expenditure
law.
more
is
it
needs
not an evil
one of the conditions of
life.
It is
expiration following inspiration.
Thus, the expenditure for others which social is
not
— everything taken into
account—a
life
demands
loss for the indi-
;;
THE HIGHEST INTENSITY OF vidual
Man
wishes to
constantly
87
a desirable enlargement, and even a necessity.
it is
;
LIFE.
become a
agitated
social
and moral being
by that
The
idea.
he remains
;
delicate cells of
mind and his heart aspire to live and to develop in the same way as those " homunculi " of which M. Renan somewhere speaks ; every one of us feels in himself a kind of
his
pushing of moral
life,
like that of the physical sap.
fecundity, and, reciprocally, fecundity that
Life
abundance of
is
is
life
true existence.
is
There
a certain generosity which is inseparable from and without which we die we shrivel up internally. We must put forth blossoms ; morality, disinterestedness, is the flower of human life. Charity has always been represented under the guise of a mother, holding out to her children her breast, overflowing with milk. That is so because, in reality, charity is but one with overflowing fecundity; it is like a maternity too large to be confined is
—
existence,
The
within the family.
mother's breast needs
eager to
life
empty it the heart of the truly humane creature needs to be gentle and helpful to all. Within the benefactor himself ;
dwells the incentive towards those
We have
verified,
even in the
who
suffer.
of the blind cell, a prin-
life
which prevents the individual being suffithe richest life is found to be that which most tends to spend itself lavishly, to sacrifice itself within
ciple of expansion,
cient unto himself
;
certain limits, to share itself with others.
most perfect organism
that the
and
will
that the ideal of individual
Thus we
Whence
it
follows
be also the most sociable,
life
is
the
life
in
common.
find replaced in the very depths of our being that/
spring of all these instincts of sympathy and which the English school has too often shown us
sociability
as
more oy
less artificially acquired in the course of evolution, and, in
consequence, as more or
less
adventitious.
We
are far
Bentham and the utilitarians, who everywhere avoid pain, who see in pain the irreconcilable enemy
distant from try to it is
as
if
one would not breathe too
strongly, for fear of too
MORALITY INDEPENDENT OF OBLIGATION OR SANCTION.
88
great expenditure.
outside,
Even
in
Spencer there
is
still
too
much
Besides, he too often looks at things from the
utilitarianism.
and does not see
in the unselfish instincts anything
There is, we believe, in the heart an evolution corresponding to the which makes the latter possible, and
but a product of society. of individual
life itself
evolution of social
which
is
life,
the cause of
it,
instead of the result.*
objection has been made to us that the fecundity of our inward forces could find its satisfaction as well in the dis^reement as in the agreement with others, in the crushing of other perBut, in the first place, one sonalities as well as in the raising of them. forgets that the others do not let themselves be so easily crushed ; the will which seeks to impose itself necessarily meets the resistance of Even if it conquers this resistance, it cannot conquer it quite others. alone it must lean on its allies, and in this way re-constitute a social group, and impose on it, with regard to this iriendly group, the very servitudes from which it tried to get free vpith regard to the other men, its natural allies. Therefore all struggle always in the end exterin the second place, it changes it internally. nally limits the will The violent man stifles the whole sympathetic and intellectual part of his being that is to say, that in him which is most complex and most elevated from the point of view of evolution. By brutalizing others he more or less brutalizes himself. Violence, which thus seemed a victorious expansion of internal power, becomes in the end a restriction of this power ; to make the humiliation of others the object of one's will is to give it an inadequate aim, and to impoverish one's self. At last, by a final and deeper disorganization, the will itself loses its equilibrium *
'
'
The
different
—
;
—
completely by the use of violence ; if the will has become used to meet no obstacle whatever from outside, as happens with despots, every one of its impulses becomes irresistible ; the most contradictory inclinations it is a complete ataxy. The despot becomes a given up to contradictory whims, and his objective omnipotence ends in bringing about a real subjective impotency"
succeed each other; child again
;
he
is
(" Education and Heredity," p. 58).
THE CREATION OF OBLIGATION.
CHAPTER
89
III.
To what Extent Inward Power creates a Sort of Obligation. Power and Duty. (I " can," therefore I "must.")
After
having established this principle of moral fecundity, which to us seems essential, there remains for us to see in what manner, and under what psychological form, it manifests itself. Is a creature impelled, by its very nature and the normal expansion of its will, to spend itself for others ? or is it simply prompted thereto by the attraction
of a special pleasure
We
etc. ?
see
—the pleasure
that
here,
also,
of sympathy, of praise, study of " mental
the
dynamics " in the English and Positivist schools has often been elementary and incomplete. Kantism has this great merit, which no naturalistic theory would be able to dispute, of having considered the primitive impulse, which constitutes one of the essential elements of duty, as anterior to all philosophical reasoning on goodness ; in fact, no demonstrative reason could suddenly change either the direction or the intensity of this spontaneous
The
impulse.
theory of the categorical imperative
is
there-
and deep, as the expression of a only Kant had no right, without
fore psychologically exact fact of consciousness
;
proof, to consider this imperative as transcendental. practical internal necessity " can be a tive
and even mechanical
necessity.
more or
"
A
less instinc-
In morality, as in
genius, there can exist a kind of natural power, preceding
knowledge Is
it
—a power which impels us
to act
and
to produce.
not precisely the characteristic of natural inclinations,
habits, customs, to
any reason
command
Custom
the individual without giving
respected in individual consciousness or in the state, as Pascal has said, " for this one reason, that
it is
?
is
accepted."
The authority
of the law
is
sometimes " entirely based upon
MORALITY INDEPENDENT OF OBLIGATION OR SANCTION.
go
itself,"
without attaching
any
itself to
"
principle.
The
law-
In the presence of every power which is anterior to it, of every force which is not that of rational ideas, the understanding always plays the secondary
is
law,
part,
and nothing more."
Kant's philosophy has so well shown.
as
itself in
Yet
the presence of a mystery.
up trying
that the understanding gives
it
It
feels
does not follow
to explain this mystery,
even in a somewhat superficial way. On the contrary, there is nothing for which human intelligence finds so many explanations as for a thing which
many
theories
on goodness
this irrational affirmation
to put
In
)
1
[
it,
it
must
reality,
—
be
Sei /
reason
in
!
/
:
is
for
inexplicable.
it
How many musf,
as the ancients
or,
the abstract
is
How
reasons given for
used
incapable of ex-
accounting for a force Observation, which is infra-rational in its very principle. experience, is necessary. The fact of duty imposing itself
plaining a power, an
instinct,
of
on consciousness as a superior force once being admitted with Kant, variations,
let
and
consciousness. offer
us try to clearly show this fact in
We
will afterwards see if to
anything supernatural.
problem
its
essential
in its relations with the other similar facts
us
Kant himself has " Duty
—
it
seems
of to-
stated the
where be^found which proudly repudiates all alliance with the inclinations ?" Kant, however, has not really answered this question ; he has not discovered what bond of relationship might, in spite of appearances, connect this " noble " and " proud " duty with is
in the celebrated prosopopoeia
the root of thy noble
^m
!
to
the other inclinations. " The law of duty," Confucius has also said in a sense quite like that of Kant, " is a shoreless ocean ; the world
cannot
hold
it."
But
sometimes
a
distance
hours from the shore gives a lesser mass of
of three
water the
appearance of an ocean. Sailing on the river of the Amazon, one believes oneself on the sea. To distinguish the river from the sea,
we must not
try to
look into the
1
THE CREATION OF OBLIGATION.
9
—
distance we must bend over the water and taste it. ^Inward analysis is also the only way to appreciate the real ir imaginary infinity of our moral horizon.
We
will place ourselves successively at the three points
view of the
The
I.
existence
of a certain impersonal duty
is
—
.
move
to
Whatever
duty, or to such-and-such a particular pleasure ? is
true
and deep
in
the badly elucidated notion of moral
duty can, we believe, subsist
which
\
it
created by
Firstly, First equivalent of duty. the will without appealing either to a mystic
the power-of-acting itself
how
of
the intelligence, and the sensibility.
will,
even
after the
purification
by the theory sketched above.
has undergone
Duty will be reduced to the consciousness of a certain inward power, by nature superior to all other powers. ^ To feel inwardly the greatest that one is capable of doing is really the first consciousness of
what
Duty, from the point of view of facts being
demands
much
on one
left
to
side
exercise,
—
is
one's duty to do. >
now
itself. <
life
as the sentiment of a necessity
above all, the sentiment of a power.-^, cEvery force which accumulates creates a pressure on the obstacles placed before it. Every ability (power), considered separately, -produces a kind of obligation which is proportionate to itself. To have the power to act is to be obliged to act. Among inferior beings, whose intellectual or compulsion.
It
\
which Duty has been too
a superabundance of
to impart
interpreted until
is
it
— metaphysical notions
'-'
is,
''
life
is
this
fettered
means
and smothered, there are few
that there
is
little
power.
duties
Civilized
;
man
but has
countless duties, because he possesses a very rich activity,
expended in a thousand ways. - From this point of which is in no way mystical, moral obligation is ty reduced to this great law of nature life can maintain itself It is impossible to only on the condition of diffusing itself. to be view,
:
'>
compass one's aim with certainty unless one has the power beyond it and if one holds that the self is, in itself,
to go its
own
;
aim, this
is
still
a reason
why
it
cannot
suffice for
;
MORALITY INDEPENDENT OF OBLIGATION OR SANCTION.
92
The
itself.
Sometimes sap
plant
cannot prevent
to flower
still rises.
means
it
itself
from flowering.
No
to die.
matter, the
Nature does not look back to see what it goes its way, always forward, always upward.
abandons ; it 2 The existence of a .
conception-of-action
the
for
certain impersonal duty is created by the
—
In Second equivalent of duty. activity creates a kind of
itself.
same way as the power of
impulse, so
obligation or imperative
natural
intelligence
has, in itself, a motive-power. If
we
raise ourselves high
enough, we
may
find incentives
which do not only work as springs of action, but which are, in and through themselves, without direct intervention of the sentiments, the moving power of activity and of life. Here again may be applied that important theory of ideas as forces {les idees forces) which a contemporary to action
philosopher has broached.* Intelligence
and
To
an abyss.
activity
understand
seem no longer separated by is
already the beginning in us
of the realization of that which
we understand.
ceive something better than that which exists
Action
it.
Thought
almost a word
force to express what
man,
less
the
To first
con-
labour
but the extension of the idea.
in realizing is
is
is
we are urged with so much we think that the child and the old ;
capable of resisting this compulsion, think aloud
the brain naturally makes the lips move.
In the same way, mind will make the arms and the whole body work and move it will direct life. Conception of aim, effort to
the
;
^I
attain— hese are not two let
us repeat
it,
is
a
first
things. eff'ort.
The conception itself, think, we feel, and
We
Hence, there
is no need whatever to call outward pleasure, no need of a middle term or bridge to pass from one of these two
action follows.
for the intermediate agent of
* See edition),
M. Alfred FouilWe's " La Liberie et le Determinisme " (2nd and " La Critique des Syst^mes de Morale Contem-
poraine.''
THE CREATION OF OBLIGATION. things
to
93
Thought, action— they are funda-
the other.
mentally identical.
That which the
is
called obligation or moral restraint
is,
in
sphere of intelligence, the sentiment of this radical
identity.
<
Obligation
is
an internal expansion
—a
need to
complete our ideas by converting them into action.
who does
moreover, that something
feels,
plete
not act as he thinks, thinks incompletely.
he
;
not
is
himself
fails
him
;
Immorality
he is
is
an
'
He He
not cominternal
Every movement of the mind lifts the body up. Not to act in accordance with that which we believe to be the best is to be like one who can neither laugh when he is joyful, nor weep when he is sad ; who, in short,, can neither outwardly express nor translate anything of that which he feels. That would be supreme torture. The distinction between the will and the intelligence has been made too great, and has been of such a kind as to immediately bring into evidence the need of moving the mutilation.
by means of motives of sentiment or feeling. need not be called in so long as the inner mechanism of thought and of life is sufificient, ;nce,/ may be said that will is but a superior degree of intelligence, and that action is but a superior degree of will. will exclusively
But
exterior motives
From being.
—an
that
moment
morality
is
nothing else than unity of
Immorality, on the contrary,
is
a dividing into two
which limit each Hypocrisy consists in checking the natural expression of thought, and in substituting a contrary expression for it ; in this sense it could be said that, in essence, immorality is hypocrisy, and, consequently, a check on the opposition
of different faculties,
other.
development of the being.* J. The existence of a certain impersonal duty created by the been completed by important passages in " Educaand Heredity," translated by W. J. Greenstreet, M.A., and pub(See pp. 75-79.) lished in the Contemporary Science Series. * This theory has
tion
94
MORALITY INDEPENDENT OF OBLIGATION OR SANCTION.
growing fusion of
the se?isibilities,
and
by the more sociable
Third equivalent of duty. A new kind of obligation is derived from the very nature of sensibility, which tends to transform itself by the effect of evolution. The superior pleasures which daily form a character of the higher pleasures.
—
greater part of
human
reasoning, of learning, things, etc.
—require
life
—pleasures
of
art,
pleasures of
and of understanding, of finding out
far less, as regards external conditions,
much more accessible to all, than pleasures. The happiness of a thinker or
.and are
happiness which costs
little.
the really selfish
of an
artist is
a
With a piece of bread, a book,
may taste a pleasure infinitely superior an imbecile in a carriage with armorial bearings,
or a landscape, you to that of
drawn by
four horses.
The
superior pleasures are, therefore,
both more intimate, deeper, and more free of expense .(without always being completely so)^ They tend to separate beings far less than do the inferior pleasures.
Thus, by a natural evolution, the origin of a great
of our
many
pleasures seems to ascend from the outward to the
inward.
The man
of feeling possesses, in his
own
activity,
a source of very varied enjoyment, and that sometimes independently of outward things. Does it follow from this that he will shut himself himself,
the
like
stoic
up
in himself,
sage?
and
will suffice
Far from
pleasures have this remarkable characteristic
it;
—
unto
intellectual
that they are both the most inward and the most communicative, the most
and the most social, pleasures of our being. Bring together thinkers, or lovers of the beautiful (as long
.individual
there is no personal rivalry between them) ; they will like each other more quickly, and in any case more truly, than
.as
other people
;
they will at once recognise that they live
—
same sphere that of thought they will feel themselves as of the same country. This bond which will be established between them will also link their conduct, and will impose on them, in their mutual relations, a particular kind of obligation it is an emotional bond a union in the
;
;
—
THE CREATION OF OBLIGATION. produced by the complete, or and of thoughts.
95
harmony of sentiments
partial,
The higher we rise in the scale of evolution, the more do the pleasures of mankind seem to partake of a social and The
idea becomes one of the essential Now, the idea is a kind of contingent
sociable character.
sources of pleasure.
common
to all
human
brains
it
;
a universal conscious-
is
more or less made up of individual consciousness. As the part played by ideas in the life of every one of us
ness,
increases,
we
find that the part of the universal increases
and fends
to predominate over the individual. Conbecomes more easy of penetration. He who is born to-day is meant for a much more intensely intellectual life than he who was born a hundred thousand years ago ; and yet, notwithstanding the intensity of his individual also,
sciousness then
life,
his intelligence will
more
socialized ;
richer,
it
be found to be, so to speak, its being so
precisely because of
will possess
much
less for itself alone.
much much
It is
the
same with sensibility. We have already asked, in commenting on Epicurus, what, after all, would a purely personal and selfish pleasure be ? Do pleasures of that kind exist, and what share in life do they have ? To this ever-present question we answer, as we did before We see, in descending the scale of beings, that the sphere in which each of them moves is small, and almost shut off; if, on the contrary, we :
ascend towards superior beings, we see their sphere of action open out, become larger, lose itself in the sphere of action of other beings.
from the other
The
—
selves
self distinguishes itself less or, rather, it
of them, in order to form of scale, along which partly travelled over
by
own
exist.
it is
itself,
action.
to create outside of itself
At the same
less
Now,
this sort
has already been in its evolution.
true, selfishness
virtue of the very fecundity of all
to enlarge its
and
human thought moves, by the human species
Its point of departure was,
ness,
itself
and
has more and more need
life,
;
but selfishwas obliged
new
centres for
time, sentiments correlative to
— ;
96
MORALITY INDEPENDENT OF OBLIGATION OR SANCTION.
tendency are born from time to time, and, so to speak, overlap the selfish sentiments which served
this centrifugal
principles. We are on the way to an epoch in which primitive selfishness will recede more and more, be driven back, and become more and more unknown to us. In this ideal era a being will, so to speak, no longer be able to enjoy himself alone ; his pleasure will be like a concert, in which the pleasure of others must form a part, by virtue of its being a necessary element and is it not
them as
;
already so in
the part
many
to
left
cases at present
mere
selfishness is
If,
?
in hfe generally,
compared with that which
be seen how relatively small the first is ; even the most selfish pleasures, being entirely such as the pleasure of eating and drinking physical belongs to " altruism,"
will
it
—
charm only when we share them with predominant part played by the social sentiments in all our enjoyments and all our pains. Moreover, pure selfishness would not only be, as we have shown, a kind of self-mutilation it would be an impossibility.
acquire their
We
others.
full
shall find this
;
Neither
my
sufferings
nor
my
pleasures are absolutely
my
own. The thorny leaves of the aloe, before being fully developed and spread out in enormous bands, remain for a long while folded one over the other, forming, as it were,
one
single heart.
In that stage the thorns of every leaf are
imprinted on the neighbouring leaves grow freely,
Later on
leaf.
and spread themselves out
;
all
yet this
these
mark
and even grows with their growth. It is a seal of The same thing happens pain, stamped upon them for life. in our heart, in which all the joys and pains of mankind remains,
are imprinted from the very
one of
us,
whatever
we may
moment
of
In the same way, in short, as the self psychology, an illusion
;
as there
is
its birth.
On
each
mark remains stamped.
do, this
is,
for
contemporary
no separate personality
and as we are composed of an infinite number of beings, and of small consciences and states of consciousness; so selfish pleasure may be said to be an illusion. My own
CREATION OF OBLIGATION.
97
pleasure does not exist without the pleasurg of others feel
that the
whole community
has,
more or
less,
;
I
to con-
from the small family circle which surrounds us in which I live.* Thus, then, a truly positive moral science may, to a certain extent, speak of obligation; and that, on the one hand, without intervention of any mystical idea, and on the other without appealing (as Bain does) to an exterior and social compulsion, or to an inward ''fear." No it is sufificient to tribute to
it,
to the large
community
;
consider the normal directions of psychic
life.
There
will
always be found a kind of inner pressure exercised by the activity
itself in
these directions
;
the moral agent
will,
by a both natural and rational inclination, feel itself driven in that sense, and it will recognise that it has to make a kind of inner coup coup d'etat which
d^'etat
we
to escape that pressure.
It is this
In committing
call fault, or crime.
the individual does wrong to himself; voluntarily extinguishes something of his
it
he decreases and physical or mental
life.
Moral of
life,
which has
obligation,
therefore happens to
its
come
root in the very function in principle before thinking
consciousness, and springs from the obscure and unconscious
depths of our being
—
or, if
one prefers to put
it
so,
from
the sphere of spontaneous and synthetical consciousness.
The
sentiment of natural obligation may, in a great measure,
be brought back to
means
this
formula
:
by and modi-
I ascertain in myself,
of reflective consciousness, certain powers
which, however, do not spring therefrom, but which spring from unconscious and sub-conscious depths in myself, and which urge me in a certain fixed .direction. Thus, across the luminous sphere of consciousness are flashing rays of heat from that obscure fire which constitutes fications,
the inner
life.
* See our
'
'
Morale d'Epicure " (second
edition), p. 288.
MORALITY INDEPENDENT OF OBLIGATION OR SANCTION.
98
CHAPTER
IV.
The Sentiment of Obligation from the Point of View of Mental Dynamics as Impulsive or Repressive Force. In whatever manner duty may be metaphysically or morally represented, springs
of
is
not,
is
with regard to other motives
without
a
certain
and
psycho-mechanical
Dynamically considered, the sentiment of obliga-
power. tion
it
action,
a force acting in time according to a determinate
direction with to find out
more or
how
less intensity.
We,
therefore,
have
these powers of action have been born
—these impulsive forces
which are, at the same time, and sentiments. We should like to sketch here the dynamic genesis of the sentiment of obligation and of its dynamic action, so that in future we may look upon it, in us
ideas
not as a limitation or restriction of activity, but as the very consequence of its expansion. A man celebrated for his courage and integrity (Daumesnil) said, one day, to a " I do not follow my conscience I According to this very delicate distinction, the impulses of the moral and social order may be divided into two classes. By the one, we are literally driven forward
minister of Charles X.
am
driven by
:
;
it."
by the sentiment of duty without having time to discuss, to deliberate, to reason by the other, we allow ourselves ;
be dragged along in its course with a more precise consciousness of a possible and already real resistance of a certain independence. to
A
example of impulsive and spontaneous by some poor labourers in a lime-kiln in the Pyrenees. One of them, having to descend into the kiln to look after something which had gone wrong, fell down suffocated. Another, hurrycharacteristic
sentiment
is
given us
ing to his assistance, also accident,
the spot.
fell.
A
woman, witnessing the
Other labourers hastened to For the third time a man went into the burning
called for
help.
;
THE SENTIMENT OF OBLIGATION.
99
kiln and immediately succumbed. A fourth, a fifth man jumped into it, and succumbed. Only one man remained he approached, and was ready to jump, when the woman, who was standing on the spot, clutched him by his clothes and, half mad with terror, kept him back on the edge. A little later, when the magistrates arrived at the place of
the accident
to
hold an inquest, the only survivor was
questioned on his thoughtless
self-sacrifice,
magistrates began very gravely to point
and one of the him the
out to
The man gave this admirable answer " My comrades were dying ; I felt driven to go." In this example the sentiment of moral obligation and irrationality of his conduct. :
human It was,
solidarity had, in appearance, lost its rational basis.
however,
drive five
men
still
sufficiently
powerful to successively
to the useless sacrifice of their lives.
It will
not be disputed that, in this case, the sentiment of duty appeared more in the form of a spontaneous impulse of a sudden overflow of inward life towards others, than in the form of a deliberate respect for an abstract " moral law," or of a search for " pleasure " or " utility." Moreover, let it
—
be noted
and
that,
sentiment,
with the development of it is
human
in an almost reflex state without there being it
intelligence
impossible to discover the moral impulse
mixed up with
general and generous, even metaphysical, ideas.
At other times the spontaneous sentiment of of inciting to action, stops
it
suddenly.
duty, instead
Then may develop
what Messrs. Maudsley and Ribot, with the physiologists, would call a power of suspension or of "inhibition'' not less sudden and violent than the power of impulse. " I was still a Uttle fellow in skirts," the American preacher, Parker, tells us, " and only four years old. I had never killed the smallest creature ; yet I had seen other children amuse themselves by kilUng birds, squirrels, and other little animals One day I discovered, in a not very deep pond, a small speckled tortoise warming itself in the sun. I lifted my stick to give it a knock Suddenly something
I
;
lOO
MORALITY INDEPENDENT OF OBLIGATION OR SANCTION.
held back
me
saying.
my
arm, and I heard a strong, clear voice within
That
sensation, this
of me, opposed air until I
had
is
wicked
!
Quite surprised at this new in me, and in spite kept my stick lifted up in the
unknown power which
my
actions, I
lost sight of the tortoise
no other event of my impression upon me."
life
has
I
must own that
such a deep and lasting second example the sudden
left
In this
more remarkable than in the presuspends action already begun, and opposes a sudden obstacle to the nervous discharge ready to be sent forth. It is a coup de theatre, a sudden revelation. The power of the sentiment is made more evident action of feeling
is
ceding one, because
still it
by suspension than by impulsion by prohibition rather Moreover, after an experience of that kind, the sentiment of what must be done may, to the thoughtful conscience, at once assume a mystic character which it does not always have in other cases. When the intelligence is, in so sudden a way, confronted with a deep, strong instinct, it tends towards a kind of religious respect. Thus, from the restricted point of view of pure mental dynamics which we adopt, duty can already produce a sentiment of respect which it owes, partly to its great power ;
than by command.
of arrest, partly to
The
its
mysterious origin.
force of the moral sentiment acquires a
more remarkable character, not of sudden impulse or
if
it
shows
itself
in
repression, but as
more and the form,
an inward
constant tension. In most cases, and with most people, the sentiment of what must be done is not violent, but it is durable. In default of intensity, it has its advantage in time, which is as yet the most powerful of
pressure, a
factors.
A
and same direction, must necessarily conquer resistances which are much stronger, but which neutralize each other. When, for the first time, the idea of helping tension not very strong, but acting continuously
always in
the
France entered the soul of Joan of Arc,
this idea did
not
THE SENTIMENT OF OBLIGATION.
lOI
prevent her from bringing her sheep back to the farm later on,
when
her mind,
this
altered her whole
it
changed the of humanity
fate of France,
in
but
life
as a peasant
a very appreciable manner.
form which
first,
this
it
If,
will
we
shall
and then adopt later on
for its power,
power
then,
we
analogies, not with the
its
impulsive force, but with the force of tension, better able to account,
girl,
and thus modified the course
consider the inoral sentiment in
special
;
same idea took complete possession of
be
for the
in the
— the sentiment of moral obligation.
mind The
force of tension
filling
the
structible
;
(2)
intermissions
:
—
being very nearly
— for
harmony and
in to,
may belong
following conditions
instance,
to every instinct ful-
(i)
being almost inde-
constant
of hunger;
in association with,
and without
(3)
finding itself
and not
in opposition
those other instincts which promote the maintenance
of the species.
remark that moral obligation, properly sodemands the immediate doing of the act nor even its fulfilment in a general way ; it accompanies the idea of an act possible, but not necessary. Duty is, in this case, no longer an irresistible, but a lasting impulse ; it is a sublime obsession.' We soon experience, as Darwin has shown, that an inclination is not destroyed by violating it. The discontent which we feel after having disobeyed it shows us our impotence to uproot the instinct which we have had the power to violate. This instinct may, at each moment of its duration, be inferior to the sum of forces demanded for the accomplishment of the act; but it appears in the conscience as a permanent instinct, and thus gains a quite new kind of power. In this way we have, among the inward forces, the sentiment of a force which is not insurmountable, but which is, for us, indestructible (or at least seems to us to be so after a series of experiences). In this respect obligation in its most elementary state is the ^^ prevision of the indefinite duration Let us
first
called, neither
MORALITY INDEPENDENT OF OBLIGATION OR SANCTION.
I02
of an impersonal and generous inclination, the experience of There is, moreover, no distinct consciousness of the bonds of obligation until there has been
its indestructibility."
more
—
or less a feeling of remorse spite of
the instinct in
of
that
to say, persistence
is
violation.
its
Mistake
is
a
necessary element in the formation of thoughtful moral consciousness. In reality, it is the idea of time which
begins to give
particular character to that instinct
its
of
duty in which Kant saw only the manifestation of the intemporal. Under the sway of passion the actual intensity
sum of forces which on the mind. The future and the past have no influence. Now, the past and the future, remembered or foreshadowed,
of the inclinations alone enters into the act
The
are a condition of morality.
greater
every
if
our imagination
in
moment
of time.
A
pressure of the great
infinitely greater and becomes multiplied by being to become moral must
instincts, useful to the species,
grows it
possess consciousness of the duration of time.
One knows
the examples by which Darwin shows that,
if
animals had our intelligence, their instinct would be replaced
by a sentiment of
—from
^-feeling
This sentiment of obligation
obligation.
of view of dynamics,
the point
effectively
instinct
depends solely on
on the
;
it
is
inde-
moral or non-moral direction of the
pendent of
its
intensity, its duration,
and
which it meets in its environ" Let us suppose," Darwin says, " to take an extreme ment. case, that, if men had been born under the same conditions of life as the bees, without doubt our non-married females, following the example of the work-bees, would consider it their sacred duty to kill their brothers, and the mothers would try to kill their pregnant daughters, without anyone resistance or assistance
interfering."* * See
" The Descent
poraine."
An
of
Man
''
and our " Morale Anglaise Contem-
empirical verification of these theories on the relation
of instinct and of obligation
would be necessary
may be
to continue in
sought.
To accomplish this it way the experiments
a methodical
— THE SENTIMENT OF OBLIGATION.
I03
Now, why is it impossible to satisfy the moral instinct which in man is found to really coincide with the social and humanitarian instinct and why does it not take the periodical form of the other instincts ? There are two
—
sorts of instincts
— the one tends
to repair the expenditure
of force, the other to produce this expenditure.
The
first
they disappear when once the want is satisfied ; they are periodical and non-continuous. Polyphagy, for instance, is rare. The others tend very often are limited by their very object
;
commenced by Messrs. Charcot and Richet, on what we will call moral made in a state of somnambulism. According to these
suggestions,
experiments,
a,
command
given to someone in a state of somnambulism
bj- the person, sooner or later, when he wakes up, without his being able to himself interpret the reasons which have urged him to do the action. The magnetizer thus seems to have been able to create at all points an inward tendency, an inclination persistent in the background, and imposing itself on the will of the patient. In these curious examples the dream of the somnambulist still dominates and directs his life after his awakening ; it is like an
during his sleep
executed
is
artificial instinct in
birth.
its
observed by Mr. Richet.
Here
It deals
One
of not taking sufficient food. told her that she ought to eat a
instance, a curious case
for
is,
with a
woman who had
the mania
day, during her sleep, Mr. Richet
good
deal.
When
awakened, she had
completely forgotten the injunction. However, one of the following days, the nursing sister of the hospital took Mr. Richet aside, to tell
him
that she could not
make
out the change which had taken place in
the patient.
" She now always asks
sister said.
If these facts
for
more food than
only the execution of a particular order, approaching very closely to natural instinct.
moral
I give her," the
were carefully observed, we have here, not but unconscious impulse, In short, every natural or
instinct is derived, as Cuvier remarks,
from a sort of somnam-
gives us an order of which we ignore the reason hear the " voice of conscience " without knowing whence it comes.
bulism, because
it
vary the experiment, one ought to order the patient, not only to for instance, to get this
up early every day,
way succeed in modifying the moral
and the
state of
to
work
obligation
to
it
eat, but,
in
character of persons by degrees,
somnambulism might become important
would attach
we To
One might
steadily.
as a means were possible instinct, undoubtedly a kind of mystical provided it did not meet with resistance
of action in the moral hygiene of some sick people. thus to create an artificial
;
—
If
it
.
I04
MORALITY INDEPENDENT OF OBLIGATION OR SANCTION.
become continuous and unsatisfied. Thus, in certain depraved organisms the sexual instinct may lose its habitual to
character of periodicity
mania or diture
satyriasis.
of
force
and
may
lectual debauch, love of travel,
etc.
instincts
We
regularity, to
Every
become nympho-
instinct urging
thus
become
money, of
to
an expen-
insatiable
play,
—
intel-
of fighting,
of
have to distinguish, therefore, between
demanding varied expenditure of force and those
from other pre-existent and more vivid inclinations. An inverse experiment might also be made, to see if it would not be possible to annul, by a repeated series of orders, such or such a natural instinct. It is said that a somnambulist can be made to lose his memory, for instance, viiith regard to names ; he can even be made to lose his whole memory, according to Mr. Richet (Rev. Philos., October 8th, 1880).
He
adds:
" This experiment must only be attempted with the utmost prudence ; I have, in such a case, seen so great a terror and such a disorder of the an hour, that I If one identifies memory, as most of the psychologists do, with habit and instinct, one would think it would be also possible in a somnambuUst to provision ally annihilate, or at least weaken, instincts even of the most fimdamental or most obligatory kind, such as the maternal instinct, modesty, etc. It remains to be known if this suppression of instinct would not leave some traces after the awakening. Then the power of resistance of diverse instincts might be tested for instance, of the moral instincts ; and it might be shown which are the deepest and most tenacious, the intelligence caused, persisting for about a quarter of
should not like to re-commence this dangerous attempt often."
—
selfish or the altruistic impulses. Anyway, the experiment of destroying bad habits or hereditary manias might be attempted ; it might be seen if
a series of orders or advice often repeated during sleep could, for
instance, lessen delusions of grandeur
The madman, commanded to the madman who
and persecutions.
believing himself to be an object of hatred, could be love his enemies
;
prayer might be forbidden to
believed he was thus entering into direct communication with God, etc. In other words, one would try to counterbalance a natural mania by an impulse, created during sleep. Somnambulism would thus be found to be a subject of richer psychological and moral observation than
artificial
insanity.
Both are derangements of the mental mechanism
;
but in
the state of somnambulism this derangement can be calculated and regulated by the magnetizer. Since the first edition of this book many
experiments of this kind have been made, and with success
THE SENTIMENT OF OBLIGATION. demanding always the same expenditure.
I05 [J^'hose
which
belong to one particular organ are very easily exhausted. Those which include a series of indefinite tendencies love of exercise, of movement, of action)
(as, for instance,
can naturally be
satisfied less easily,
expenditure gives a kind of instinct belongs, as
mental
because the variety of
The
rest.
force, to this
social
kind
;
and jnoral
it is
therefore
among those which easily become insatiable and continuous. What happens if some instinct or other has thus become insatiable little
?
Every time an instinct
varied in
its
exercised which
is
is
but
manifestations there follows such an exhaus-
tion of the organism that
it is
unable to repair the expenditure.
The nymphomaniac has no children. of brain-force also checks fecundity
The exaggerated
A too great expenditure
— even
causes untimely
and of war multiplies the risks and diminishes the chances of life. But there are some rare tendencies which may become insatiable without checking the multiplication of the species, but, on the contrary, favouring it. First in the list naturally comes the altruistic sentiment that is, the one which could best produce a strong feeling which persists after a passing gratification. Even from the physiological point of view, it is possible to thus show the necessary formation of the social and moral instinct. The aesthetic instinct, which prompts the artist to seek beautiful forms, to act according to a certain order and death.
love of danger
—
measure, to perfect everything he does
much
—
this instinct is very
moral inclinations, and, like these, can give rise The artist to a certain sentiment of rudimentary obligation. feels
like
inwardly obliged to produce, to create, and to create
harmonious works in taste as
conduct
;
many
;
he
is
as vividly
conscientious
he incessantly
feels,
wounded by
a mistake
people by a mistake in with regard to forms and
colours or sounds, this double sentiment of indignation and
admiration, which one might believe to belong exclusively to the moral judgment.
Even the
artizan, the skilled
work-
;
MORALITY INDEPENDENT OF OBLIGATION OR SANCTION.
I06
man, does whatever he works at with satisfaction ; loves his work ; cannot consent to let it remain unfinished and unpolished. This instinct, which is to be traced even in the bird building its nest, and which has burst forth with extraordinary power in certain artistic temperaments, might '
undoubtedly, in a people hke the Greeks, in
its
development,
give rise to an asthetic obligation similar to moral obligation
but the Eesthetic instinct was only indirectly connected with the propagation of the species for this reason it has neither ;
become
nor has
sufficiently general,
it
acquired sufficient
has only become of real importance where it was in touch with sexual selection. In the relation of the sexes the aesthetic inclination becomes something like a intensity.
It
moral bond remorse.
;
the aversion,
The
ends in a kind of which an individual feels
violated,
if
sesthetic aversion
with regard to certain individuals of the other sex
among animals
even
;
it is
known
is
noticed
that a stallion will disdain
be coupled with too coarse mares. In man we find that this same sentiment connected, moreover, with many others, social or moral will produce far more marked effects. The negro women whom their to
—
— —
masters want to pair like animals, and so marry by force to the males chosen for
them
— have even gone so
far as to
strangle the children of this enforced union (and yet pro-
miscuousness
is
frequent
tries to gratify his brutal
and
of the race.
;
parents, marries a feel
much below him
A man who
woman
physically
man who
feels afterwards
displeases her,
may
afterwards
a disgust strong enough, near enough to moral remorse,
to throw herself out of the
In
negroes).
an he has the feeling of it being a degradation The young girl who, in obedience to her
aesthetically too
inward shame
among
desire with a
all
same
window of the
nuptial chamber.
these instances the aesthetic sentiment produces the
effect as the
bring obligations.
moral sentiment. Genius and beauty Like every power discovered in our-
selves, they clothe us in
our
own
eyes with a certain dignity,
THE SENTIMENT OF OBLIGATION.
I07
and they impose on us a
duty. If genius were absolutely necessary to every individual in order to conquer in the struggle for life, it would undoubtedly have become general. Art would be to-day a groundwork common to mankind, like virtue.
One
of those instincts which, apart from the moral and
esthetic instinct, has been able to so sufficiently develop certain individuals as tg make it possible for the English school to regard it as an analogue to the sentiment of obligation is the inclination so often given as an instance
itself in
—
by this school viz., avarice. But, even from and still gross point of view which we here
this
narrow
take, let us
notice the inferiority of this impulse in comparison with
the moral instinct.
of
life,
Avarice, while diminishing the comfort
has the same effect as poverty
fecundity, for the miser
is
;
it
does not promote
afraid of having children.
Besides,
whose development has been cramped by the paternal avarice, a reaction is very often produced which prompts it to prodigality. In short and this is a decisive reason avarice, not having any social utility, has not been encouraged by opinion. Let us imagine a society of misers. Every one of them will have but one aim to transform his neighbour into a spendthrift, so as to be able to lay hands on his gold. If, nevertheless, against all possibility, misers could live with perfect mutual understanding and mutual incitement to avarice, it would not be long before we should see a " du.ty ofparsimony " spring up a sentiment as strong as many other duties. Among our French peasants, and in the child,
—
—
—
—
especially
among
the Jews,
we
find this
not very moral
obligation raised almost to the level of moral duties.
member
A
of a society of misers would undoubtedly feel the
obligation of parsimony more strongly than that of temperance or courage, for instance ; he would feel deeper remorse for having failed in this obligation than in either of the others.
From
the foregoing
it
may
already be concluded, inde-
I08
MORALITY INDEPENDENT OF OBLIGATION OR SANCTION.
many other considerations, that it is impossible that the different moral duties, divers forms of the social or pendently of altruistic
instinct,
should not he born
others could spring up.
A
;
and hardly any
fresh reason, which ought to
assure the triumph of the moral instinct,
is
the impossi-
by a good action When once hunger is stilled, as one satisfies hunger. the pain felt becomes but a vague remembrance, which we at last completely lose. It is not the same with remorse ; the past seems indelible, and is ever smarting. For the rest, no wants which are not too merely animal admit of such compensations as hunger and thirst allow. Thus it is with love. You may everlastingly regret the supreme hour of love which the beloved woman offered you, and which you allowed to slip away, without having ever been able to win it back again. The lover cannot, as in a comedy of Shakespeare, replace one woman by another. bility
—
of satisfying remorse, of satisfying
it
" Je ne vis qu'elle etait belle Qu'en sortant des grands bois sourds Soit, n'y
Et
moi,
pensons plus,
dit-elle,
fy pense tonjours."
In short, the most considerable advantage of the moral them belongs the last word.' If I have sacrificed myself, I am either dead, or I survive
instincts, as instincts, is that to
with the satisfaction of duty
The
fulfilled.
selfish instincts
are those which are always thwarted in their triumph.
enjoy the satisfaction of
fulfilled
duty
is
To
to forget the trouble
we took in fulfilling it. On the contrary, the thought that we have failed in our duty somehow embitters even our pleasure. In general the remembrance of work, of strain, of effort employed for the satisfaction of any instinct,
soon effaced
is
but the remembrance of the unsatisfied instinct persists as long as the instinct itself. Leander soon forgot with Hero the great effort made in crossing the
Hellespont in the
;
he would not have been able ; embrace of another lover.
to forget
Hero
;
THE SENTIMENT OF OBLIGATION.
The moral
1
09
once established in its generality, what order has it given rise to the different particular moral instincts, the well-considered formula of which will constitute the different duties ? In an order often the reverse of the logical order adopted by moralists. Most moralists give the first place with
instinct being
power
its
in constant application, in
to the duties towards ourselves, to the conservation of the
inward dignity
;
next, they place the duties of justice before
the duties of charity.
This order
by no means an absooften produced in
is
and a quite contrary order
lute one,
is
The
the evolution of moral impulses.
and
ignores justice
savage generally
right properly so-called,
but he
is
sus-
he does not know tempernecessary, he will risk his life
ceptible of an impulse of pity
;
and yet, if Temperance, courage, are, to a great extent, and derived virtues. Temperance, for instance, is
ance, shame,
etc.,
for his tribe. social still,
among
the masses, a social virtue.
people, at a meal to which he
drink so
much
is
If a
as in the public-house,
it
is
sentiment
moral
of
refinement.
without a certain desire
of the
more from
Courage for
fear
than from a
of impropriety or from fear of indigestion
exists
man
invited, does not eat or
praise,
hardly
ever
honour
for
has been much developed, as Darwin has shown, In short, duties towards by means of sexual selection. ourselves in the way we moderns understand them may, in a great measure, be reduced to duties towards it
others.
Moralists distinguish between negative duties duties,
between abstaining and
acting.
and
positive
Abstaining, which
pre-supposes self-control, sut compos, comes
first
from the
moral point of view; it is justice. But it is much less One of the primitive from the point of view of evolution. most difficult _ things to obtain from primitive beings is Moreover, that which is called right precisely abstention. and duty in a strict sense is more often posterior to duty in the large sense
;
this, for
primitive people, has often a less
no
MORALITY INDEPENDENT OF OBLIGATION OR SANCTION.
To throw
obligatory character.
one's self into a fight to
many
help a comrade will seem to a savage (and to
men) more
and more honourable than
obligatory
from robbing him of his
Cunningham
The people
wife.
no more of the
says, think
life
civilized
to abstain
in Australia,
of a
man
than
none the less or even of charity, of susceptible, when the moment comes, heroism. The Polynesians commit child-murder without a shadow of remorse but they can very tenderly love the There is, in the children whom they thought fit to spare. effort demanded by abstention, an often greater working of the will than in acting, only it is less visible hence moralists have been inclined to attribute a secondary importance to of that of a butterfly
;
they are, for
all that,
;
;
One does
abstention.
not see the effort of Hercules in
up a heavy burden with outstretched arm, precisely because the arm is motionless, and does not tremble but this immobility costs more inward energy than many move-
lifting
;
ments.
Up
to this point
we have considered
only as a sentiment conscious of sentiments of the
and is
its
human
hidden causes
going to happen
rational
—when
causes of
its
the
action
soul,
its
the moral sentiment
relations to the other
but unconscious of
its
—as non-philosophic, in short.
when
What
the sentiment becomes reflective,
moral
and
source
man
to justify
wants it ?
to
If
explain
we must
the
believe
Mr. Spencer, moral obligation, which implies resistance and must some day disappear to make room for a kind The altruistic instinct will be of moral spontaneousness. so incomparably strong that without struggle it will bear We shall not even estimate its power, because us along. we shall not feel tempted to resist it. We might say that at that time the force of tension which the idea of duty
effort,
possesses will transform itself into a living force as soon as there shall be an opportunity,
only become conscious of
even says the day
will
it
and we
shall,
as a living force.
come when
so to speak,
Mr. Spencer
the altruistic instinct
THE SENTIMENT OF OBLIGATION. will
be SO powerful that men
and death.
sacrifice
that while
it
— opportunities of
Mr. Spencer goes too tends
civilization
while
rules of
morality into mere rules of
it
on the other hand
developes thoughtful intelligence,
outward observation
— the
the scientific
is
is
spirit
the dissolving
par
Nature herself has bound.
self-
forgets
the
the higher
social propriety, of civilization
infinitely
enemy
of
excellence of
and
of inward
habits
Now,
scientific spirit, in short.
the great
force
He
indefinitely develop
to
instinct,
almost,
far.
gradually changes
altruistic
civility
each other in
will vie with
finding opportunities of exercising
Ill
all all
instinct
that
;
it
which
the revolutionary
spirit.
It incessantly struggles against the spirit of authority
which
is
at the root of societies
;
It
it
is
will also
struggle against the
Whatever
authority in the depths of conscience.
one
attributes to the impulse of duty, if this impulse
origin is
not
by reason it will find itself seriously modified by Human the continuous development of reason in man. nature, said a Chinese sceptic to Mencius, the faithful
justified
disciple it
of
Confucius,
so pliant
is
resembles the branch of the willow.
and so
flexible
that
Equity and justice
woven out of this willow. But the moral being needs to believe himself an oak with a sound heart, needs to feel himself not giving way like the willow If to the chance stroke of the hand which touches him. his conscience is but a basket woven by instinct with bending branches, reflection might easily undo what instinct
are like the basket
had done. and all its
The moral solidity.
sense will then lose
We believe it
prove the following law destruction
when
it
:
"
is
Every
all its
resistance
possible to scientifically
instinct tends to its
own
becomes conscious'"''
* See our "Morale Anglaise Contemporaine" (part ii., book iii. ). This is what M. Ribot concedes to us ( " L'Heredite Psychologique," " Instinct only disappears second edition, p. 342) ; but he adds before a form of mental activity, which takes its place by doing Intelligence could only kill the moral sentiment by finding better :
MORALITY INDEPENDENT OF OBLIGATION OR SANCTION.
112
In France, as well as in England, a certain number of objections have been brought forward against us, which tend to
make
practical thetically itself
out that moral theories are without influence in life. it
is
We
had shown that the moral sense, if hyporobbed of all truly rational authority, finds
reduced to the rdle of a constant obsession, or halluciThe answer was made to us that the moral sense
nation.
has nothing in
common
with hallucination
sense a judgment, neither
is
it
for
;
does not affirm, it commands ; and a or foolish, but not true or false."*
it
in
is
no
" Conscience
an opinion.
command may be But we,
in
wise
our turn,
say that what precisely constitutes the dogmatic character
of a
command
is
plausible reasons
that
— that
it
is
Every
false view of the reality.
"affirmation,"
and
does not explain itself at all by it corresponds with a
to say, that
command
not
implies,
only
thus includes an
"foolishness"
or
In the same way, every mad affirmation implicitly includes a rule of conduct. person is not only " deceived " by the ideas which possess
"wisdom," but error or
truth.
A
him
—he
rule us.
is
directed
by them
our illusions
;
command and
The moral sentiment which keeps me from
killing
on me as a sentiment, by means of the same springs as the immoral impulse which urges a maniac to kill ; we are both moved in the same way, but according to opposite acts
One
motives or springs. if this,
my
has, therefore, always to
motive, possesses
more
examine
rational value than that
something better." Assuredly, on the condition that the word better be taken in quite a physical and mechanical sense. For example, it is better it is preferable for the cuckoo to lay her eggs in the nest of other birds but this does not seem to be better, speaking absolutely, nor, above all, does it seem so for the other birds. An amelioration from the point of view of the individual, and even of the species, might
—
—
;
therefore not always be identical with
There is here, at examined ; it is precisely tion."
least,
what we
call
" moral ameliora-
a question which deserves to be
this question
which we examine in
volume. * Mr. Pollock, in
Mind {vol.
iv., p.
446).
this
THE SENTIMENT OF OBLIGATION. of
the
That
murderer.
is
the
question.
II3 If,
now, to
appreciate the rational value of motives, one trusts to a
purely positive and scientific criterion, a certain
number
of
be produced between public utility and personal utility conflicts which it is right to foresee. As to the hope that instinct will be able to decide in these conflicts quite alone, we do not believe in it on the contrary, instinct will be more and more altered in man by the conflicts will
—
;
progress of reflection.
We
should not, therefore, be able to agree with our
critics on this essential point. Has the science of which is a systematization of moral evolution in humanity, no influence on this very evolution ; and is it unable to modify its meaning in any important way ? In more general words, does not every phenomenon, in becoming conscious of itself, change under the very influence of this consciousness ? Elsewhere we have made the remark that the instinct of suckling, so important in mammifers, to-day tends to disappear in many women. There is a still much more essential phenomenon the most essential of all that of generation, which tends to modify itself according to the same law. In France (where the majority of the people are not held back by religious considerations) the personal will becomes, in the sexual act, a partial substitute for the instinct of reproduction. Hence, in our country, the very slow increase in population, which causes both numeral inferiority to the other continental nations and our economic superiority (very provisional, however, and already compromised). Here, then, is a striking instance
English
ethics,
—
—
of the intervention of the will in the sphere of instinct.
no longer protected by a religious or moral becomes powerless to furnish a rule of conduct. The rule is borrowed from purely rational considerations, and generally from considerations of mere personal utility by no means of social utility. Yet the most important duty of Instinct, being
creed,
—
the individual
is
generation, which assures the duration of I
MORALITY INDEPENDENT OF OBLIGATION OR SANCTION.
114
the race.
Likewise, in
many
individual lives only to breed, diately
on fecundity.
To-day
of the animal species, the
and death follows imme-
this duty, first in the
animal
consigned to the lowest rank in the French nation, which, with deliberate purpose, seems to follow the maxim of in-fecundity. This is not the place to blame, but scale, finds itself
merely to
state.
The
gradual and necessary disappearance
of religion and absolute morality has in store for us.
If there is
many such
nothing in this to
surprises
terrify us, at
we must try to foresee them in the interest of science. Another remark. The mere excess of scruples may go so far as to dissolve the moral instinct in the case of confessors and their penitents. Bagehot remarks also that in reasoning excessively about modesty one may weaken, and even gradually lose, that very sentiment. Every time that reflection is steadily fixed on an instinct, on a spontaneous impulse, it tends to alter the same. This fact might, perhaps, be physiologically explained by the moderating action of the grey matter of the brain on the secondary nervous centres, and on every reflex action. For instance, if a pianist plays by heart a piece studied mechanically, it is necessary that he should play with confidence and smoothness, without paying too close an attention to himself, and without wanting to
least
account for the instinctive movement of his fingers. To reason about a system of reflex actions or habits always means to upset them.* The moral instinct, which evolution tends to strengthen
many ways, might, therefore, undergo some alteration by the excessive development of thoughtful intelligence. Undoubtedly one has to carefully distinguish, in moral in so
between metaphysical theories and practical have ourselves elsewhere made this distincbut we cannot agree with the EngHsh philosophers
philosophy, morality.
tion
;
We
* See on this point the "Probl^mes de I'Esth^tique Contemporaine," P- 137-
THE SENTIMENT OF OBLIGATION.
-115
that theories never influence practice, or at least influence it
as
as they maintain
little
is
Messrs. Pollock and
the case.
Leslie Stephen compare moral philosophy with geometry.
hypotheses relative to the reality of duty, Mr. Pollock
The
tells us,
have no more influence on conduct than the hypotheses relative to the reality of space
and
its
dimensions.
Pollock and Leslie Stephen forget that,
dimensions instead of three, to
my
legs or to
the three exists for
or other,
my
this is
of no interest either
move
within
contrary, there
to new dimenan advantage to me in some way should hasten to try, and I should work with all
if I
Messrs.
space has four
arms, which will always
known dimensions. If, on the me the means to move according
and
sions,
my
if
that might be
strength to destroy
my
primitive
intuition
of space.
what happens in moral philosophy ; a whole field of activity, closed until now by the phantom If I of the idea of duty, sometimes opens before me. notice that there is no real harm in my exercising myself freely in it, but that, on the contrary, it would be beneficial The differ* to me, how sliould I not take advantage of it ? ence between ordinary scientific speculations and speculations in moral philosophy is, that the first indicate mere alternatives for thought, while the second indicate, at the same time All the possibilities discovered by alternatives for action. It is for me to science can be here realized for ourselves. This
is
precisely
realize the hyperspace.
—
The result predicted to us by Mr. Spencer gradual disappearance of the sentiment of obligation could, therefore, be obtained in a way quite other than the one of which he Moral obligation would disappear, not because speaks. moral instinct would have become irresistible, but, on the contrary, because man, no longer taking into account any instinct, would absolutely conform his conduct to
—
reason
—would unfold
may be
his life like
said that for Vincent
in so far as
it is
a
series of
theorems.
It
de Paul moral obligation, painful and austere, had disappeared. He
II 6
MORALITY INDEPENDENT OF OBLIGATION OR SANCTION.
; but it may also be said that for had equally disappeared. He had forced himself he did not obey any to combat every moral prejudice instinct unless he could accept it after deliberate reasoning. He was more of a rational than a moral being. He sub-
was Spontaneously good
Spinoza
it
;
constantly obscure, and, so to
mitted, not to the
speak,
opaque obligation springing from his moral nature, but to the clear and transparent obligation springing from his reason. And where this obligation imposed on him any kind of suffering, he must have experienced that stoic sentiment of intellectual origin
—resignation—rather than the
Christian sentiment of mystic origin, the overflowing joy of
duty accomplished.
Anyone Therefore,
analyzing himself to excess if it is
day used by some at the
same
is
necessarily unhappy.
possible that the analytical spirit be one at the cost of their morality,
time, cost
them
ever to tempt a great
it will,
at
These are
their happiness.
many
sacrifices
too
Yet
the task of the philosopher to examine even his
it
is
instincts
;
great
he must endeavour
people.
to justify obligation, although
the very effort to justify the moral sentiment risks
its
impair-
ment by making the instinct conscious of itself, by making deliberate that which was spontaneous. Let us search in the domain of facts, to which we have methodically confined ourselves, for all the forces which would contend against moral dissolution, and thus supply the obUgation absolute of the ancient moralists.*
*
As complement
parallel chapters in
of the above chapters,
it is
" Education and Heredity
"Genesis of the Moral Instinct."
necessary to read the "
(by
Guyau) on the
SECOND BOOK.
LAST POSSIBLE EQUIVALENTS OF DUTY FOR THE
MAINTENANCE OF MORALITY.
CHAPTER
I.
Fourth Equivalent of Duty Derived fFom Love of Risk
and of Struggle.
THE PROBLEM.
Let
us recall the chief problem which presents
every exclusively
how
conception
scientific
of
itself to
morality.
To
great an extent can deliberate consciousness feel itself
bound by an impulse, by an inward pressure which hypothetically, only a natural character
—
—not a
has,
mystical nor
even a metaphysical one and which, moreover, is not completed by the prospect of any extra- social sanction ? To what extent must deliberate consciousness rationally obey
an
" obligation
A
positive
''
and
of this sort
?
scientific morality,
the individual this
commandment
we have
only
:
said, can give Develop your life
be an " individual " as rich as possible in and extensive energy ; therefore be the most social and sociable being. In the name of this general rule, which in all directions,
intensive
is
the scientific
equivalent of the
imperative,
morality can enjoin
upon the individual
moderate
;
sacrifices
it
a positive
certain partial
can formulate the whole
and
series of
/
;
MORALITY INDEPENDENT OF OBLIGATION OR SANCTION.
Il8
average duties to which ordinary
In
confined.
is
life
all
nothing categorical, nothing If you pursue absolute, only excellent hypothetical advice. this,
be
this
aim
short,
it
understood, there
— the
it is
How mere
highest intensity of
life
— then
do
this
in
;
a good average morality.
will
individual,
is
this
in
morality
and
partial
manage
from
obtain
to
the
—
a definite sacrifice not a Charity urges us provisional one ?
certain
cases,
—
which the right hand has given excellent but reason advises us to watch well what we give. The altruistic instincts invoked by the English school are open to forget that
to all sort of restrictions
them
and
alterations
for securing disinterestedness
of struggle between
them and the
is
;
to
on
rely solely
to introduce a kind
Now,
selfish impulses.
the latter are sure to get the best of the majority of people,
because they have a visible and tangible root others
appear to the individual
;
hereditary influences by which the race tries to
dupe.
individual
its
intervene,
and
Selfish reasoning
to paralyze the
first
while the
reason as a result of
is
make
the
always ready to
spontaneous movements
of the social instinct. It
belongs really to the part of the superior nerve-centres
—
moderate the action of the inferior centres to regulate the instinctive movements. If I walk along a mountainpath at the top of a precipice, and a noise or a sudden to
fear fling
makes
me
start,
the mere reflex action will urge
myself again to the other side
moderate
my movement
;
by warning
me
to
but then reason will
me
that there
is
a
The hedonist finds himself in a somewhat similar situation, when it is a question of throwing himself blindly into some sort of self-sacrifice. It is reason's part to show him the abyss, to prevent him throwing himself down without due consideration under the impulse of the first instinctive movement and the " preventive action " precipice near.
;
of reason will be, in that case, as logical, as powerful, with regard to the altruistic impulses as it can be with regard to
EQUIVALENT OF DUTY.
II9
That is what we have elsewhere an objection to the English school. The self and the not-self, therefore, are both present. They seem, indeed, to be two values without a common measure. There is in the self something sui generis
the merely reflex action. raised as
—
irreducible.
If
the
to
his
quantity
in
him
world self,
is,
his
for the
hedonist,
superior
must always seem
self
superior in quality to the world
— the
to
quality resting
he says, "and and as I maintain my existence ; this is the principle which dominates both the reason and the senses." So long, therefore, as one keeps to hedonism, one cannot logically be obliged to detach one's interest from one's self. Now, hedonism in its fundamental principle, which is the obstinate con-
for
him
you
exist
in
the
"I
enjoyment.
for me only in so
far as
am,''
I exist
servation of self cannot be refuted from the point of view
of
facts.
Only the metaphysical hypothesis may attempt
to
make
the will overcome the transition of the self to the
From
non-self
hypothesis
presented seems, at
problem can mate solution. this
and with all problem which we have just
the positive point of view, aside, the
left
first,
theoretically insoluble.
receive, in practice, at least
And
yet
an approxi-
II.
FOURTH EQUIVALENT OF DUTY, DERIVED FROM THE LOVE OF RISK AND OF STRUGGLE. It
is
rare that real sacrifices present themselves in
certain.
The
soldier, for instance, is
life
as
not certain of falling
from it there is here only a mere possibility, Now, it is necessary to In other words, there is danger. see if danger, even independently of all idea of moral in the fight ; far
obligation, life itself
is
not a
:
medium
useful for the development of
—a powerful stimulant of
all
the faculties, capable
Cy
MORALITY INDEPENDENT OF OBLIGATION OR SANCTION.
I20
maximum of energy, and maximum of pleasure.
of carrying them to their also of producing a
capable
Primitive humanity lived in the midst of danger, hence there
must
to face
still
men, as sport This
danger.
many people a
exist in
Danger was, so
it.
is
to-day, for
natural predisposition
to speak, the sport of primitive
many
people, a kind of
taste for peril, faced for its
own
sham
sake, is to
be met with even among animals. We find on this subject a curious tale of a traveller in Cambodia. As soon as a troup of monkeys notice a crocodile with its body sunk in the water, its mouth wide open, so as to
which may pass within reach, they seem to little by little, and begin their sport, being by turns actors and spectators. One of the most agile, or of the most imprudent, passes from branch to seize anything
plan together, approach
branch, to within a respectful distance of the crocodile,
suspends himself by a paw, and with the dexterity of his race advances, goes back, now striking its adversary with paw,
its
now merely
amused by
pretending to hit him.
Some
of the
game, want to be of the party but, the other branches being too high, they form a chain by holding one another hanging by their paws. They balance others,
this
;
in that way, while he who is nearest the amphibious animal torments it as much as possible. Sometimes the dreadful jaw shuts itself, but without catching the audacious monkey. There are screams of joy and merry antics ; but sometimes also a paw is caught in
themselves
the vice, and the leaping
monkey
is
water with the quickness of lightning.
drawn down under The whole troup
then disperses moaning and howling, which, however, does not prevent them beginning again the same sport several days, perhaps even several hours, later."*
The
pleasure of danger
of victory. *
One
is
derived chiefly from the pleasure
likes to conquer,
Mouhot, " Voyage dans
le
no matter whom, even an
Royaume
d'e
Siam
et
de Cambodge."
EQUIVALENT OF DUTY. animal.
We
121
prove to ourselves our superiority.
like to
Baldwin, an Englishman, '
who went
to Africa only with the
intention of shooting, one day put this problem to himself,
having been very nearly felled by a lion: "Why does man risk his life without having any interest in " It is a question which I will not try to doing so ?" " All I can say is that in victory one solve," he answered. finds an inward satisfaction for which it is worth while to run a risk, even if there is nobody to applaud." Moreover, even after having lost the hope of conquest, one obstinately goes on struggling. Whosoever may be the adversary, every fight degenerates into a desperate duel. Bombonnel, having after
rolled with a panther close to the edge of a precipice, pulled his head out of the open mouth of the animal, and threw him, by a stupendous effort, into the ravine. He lifted himself
up, blinded, spitting quantities of blood, not being able to
He thought only of one must die from his wounds, and that before dying he must revenge himself on the " I did not think of my pain. panther. Being completely carried away by fury, I pulled out my hunting-knife, and, not knowing what had become of the animal, I looked for it everywhere to begin the struggle over again. It was in this condition that the Arabs found me when they arrived." This need of danger and of victory, which carries away the soldier and the huntsman, is found also in the traveller, A French manufacturer of the colonist, the engineer. dynamite, not long ago, sent an engineer to Panama ; he died on arriving there. Another engineer went, arrived safely, account clearly for the
—namely,
thing
situation.
that probably he
but died eight days
after.
Most
professions, like that
great
many
instances of' the
attraction of the sea
lies,
A
third immediately set
sail.
of medicine, would furnish a
same kind.
The
invincible
to a great extent, in the constant
danger which it presents. which is born
It
tempts in succession each
on its shores, and if the English nation has acquired an intensity of life and force
generation
MORALITY INDEPENDENT OF OBLIGATION OR SANCTION.
122
of expansion so great that whole world, we may say that
it
has spread
itself
over the
due to its education by the sea that is to say, to its education by danger. Let us note that the pleasure of contest alters its form without disappearing, be it in the struggle with an animated being this is
—
(war (sea,
or chase), or in the struggle with visible obstacles mountain), or in the struggle with invisible things
(illness to
The
•
be cured,
be conquered). same character that
difficulties of all sorts to
struggle always partakes of the
—
In truth, the doctor who starts for Senegal has decided upon a kind of duel with the yellow of a passionate duel.
The
fever.
struggle
passes
from the domain of
thingS:
physical to the intellectual domain, without losing anything
of
its
ardour or of
its
fascination.
The
pass into the special domain of morals.
struggle
There
is
may
also
an inward
struggle between the will and the passions, as captivating as any other, and in which the victory brings an infinite joy, as was well understood by Corneille. In short, man needs to feel himself great, in order now and again to have full consciousness of the sublimity of his will. This consciousness he gets in struggle struggle with him-
-
—
self,
with
passions, or with material
his
Now,
obstacles.
have an aim.
Man
of the monkeys of
and
intellectual
our reason must too rational a being to fully approve
this struggle to satisfy is
Cambodia playing
for fun with the
jaws
of the crocodile, or of the Englishman Baldwin going into the heart of Africa for the pleasure of hunting.
of
danger
exists at times in
everyone of
The
intoxication
even in the most timid but this instinct of danger requires to be more reasonably exercised. Although, in many cases, there us,
;
is
only a superficial difference between temerity and courage,
he who,
for instance, dies for his country is conscious of
having accomplished an idle deed.
and of
greater,
not
of danger
on condition of it being thus directed and by reason, assumes a moral importance all the as it is one of the rare instincts which have no fixed
struggle,
utilized
The need
EQUIVALENT OF DUTY. direction.
It
may be used
1
23
without resistance for any social
end.
There was, therefore, in Pascal's bet an element which he did not bring to light. He saw only the fear of risk he did not see the pleasure of risk. To well understand the attraction of risk, even when the chances of misfortune ;
many
are very numerous,
psychological considerations
may
be brought forward. 1. In calculating we must not take into account only the good and bad chances, but also the pleasure of running these chances the pleasure of adventure.
—
2.
A pain
when
it
simply possible and far distant, and, above
has never yet been
felt,
all,
corresponds to a state quite
we actually are, while a desired harmony with our present state, and
other than that in which pleasure
more
is
in
thus acquires, in our imagination, a considerable value. so far as the remembrance of pain characters, so far bility all,
in
of pain leave
youth
—
may
may be
In
painful to certain
the vague and indeterminate possi-
them
indifferent.
that optimistic age
It is also rare
par
excellence)
(above
that the
chance of pain seems to us equivalent to the chance of This explains, for instance, the fearlessness which lovers have at all times shown in confronting all great pleasure.
kinds of peril in order to meet again. lessness also all
when
it
among
animals.
One
finds this fear-
Pain seen from
afar,
above
has not yet been repeatedly experienced, seems
negative and abstract to us; pleasure seems and palpable. Besides, every time that pleasure responds to a want, the representation of future enjoyment is accompanied by the sensation of an actual pain the enjoyment seems then not merely a kind of superfluity, but a relief from real pain, and its value still increases. These psychological laws are the very condition of life and activity. As most actions bring both a chance of pain and a chance of pleasure, it is, from a purely mathematical point of view, abstention which ought most often to prevail ; but in reality generally
positive
;
— :
I
MORALITY INDEPENDENT OF OBLIGATION OR SANCTION.
24
it is
action
and hope which
action itself 3.
is
—
prevail^
all
the
more so
as the
the foundation of pleasure.
Another psychological
—
times escaped a danger
fact is
:
for instance,
He who a bullet
has twenty
— concludes
on escaping it. In this way a habit of disis produced which the calculation of could not justify, and which nevertheless
that he will go
regarding danger probabilities
forms an element in the bravery of veterans.
Moreover,
the habit of disregarding danger induces a habit of dis-
—
itself a sort of admirable familiarity with neighbour who has been seen, as the saying is, " very close at hand."*
regarding death this
To
is often added that of responsibe responsible not only for one's own destiny, but for that of others to manage the world on one's own account. This intoxication of danger mixed with the joy of commanding, this intensity of physical and intellectual life exaggerated by the very presence of death, has been expressed with mystic barbarity by a German marshal, von Manteuffel, in a speech made in Alsace-Lorraine
the pleasure of risk
One
bility.
likes to
—
" War yes, gentlemen. I am a soldier. element of the soldier, and I should like !
War to
the
is
taste
it.
That elevated sentiment of commanding in battle, of knowing that the bullet of the enemy may call you any moment before God's tribunal, of knowing that the fate of the battle, and consequently the destiny of your country, may depend on the orders which you give this tension of mind and of feelings is divinely great !" The love of danger and of risk plays its part, more or less
—
degenerated, in a great of
considerable
Capitalists
who
many
importance
social circumstances.
in
the
economic
It is
sphere.
risked their savings in the enterprise of
* Even in the heart of most criminals may be traced an instinct of importance, from a social point of view, and which should be utilized the instinct of adventure. That instinct might find its use in the colonies, in the return to savage
life.
EQUIVALENT OF DUTY.
125
the Suez Canal imitated, in their way, the engineers
who
risked their Hves in
and
Speculation has
it.
in these very dangers lies its fascination.
The
of the shopkeeper at the corner of the street
amount of
a certain
If
risk.
failures (bankruptcies) with the
shall find that this risk
in endless shades
one's
—from
still
admits of
Moreover, danger
the danger of losing
danger of losing one's money
to the
life
simple trade
we compare the number of number of establishments, we
of importance.
is
and degrees
dangers,
its
of the important features of social existence.
— remains one There
is
not
a movement in the social body which does not imply a risk. And intelligent boldness to run this risk identifies itself up to a certain point with the very instinct of progress,
liberalism
;
while the fear of danger identifies
the conservative instinct, which, after
all, is
always
and
to be beaten as long as the world exists
itself
and with
doomed
progresses.
Thus, in the danger incurred on behalf of somebody (myself or some one else), there is nothing contrary to the deep instincts and laws of life. Far from it to expose one's self to danger is something normal in a morally wellconstituted individual to expose one's self to danger for the sake of others is but going a step further on the ;
;
same road.
From
this side self-sacrifice
general laws of escape.
pletely
others
of
—
self
The
and of personal
peril
seems
life
The sublime to
place
among
seemed
to
the
com-
confronted for oneself or for is not a mere negation
it
is
—
this life itself raised
into
in ethics, as well as in jesthetics, at
is
roots of the sublime
and the
;
its
at first
it
be in contradiction to the order constituting
the beautiful; but this
The
again takes
from which
intrepidity or self-sacrifice
sublimity. first
life,
only a superficial contradiction.
and the
intensity of feeling
which
beautiful are the same, it
pre-supposes does not
prevent a certain inward rationality.
When we death.
accept risk we have also accepted possible In every lottery one has to take the bad numbers,
— MORALITY INDEPENDENT OF OBLIGATION OR SANCTION.
126
Moreover, he who under such circum-
as well as the others.
stances sees death approaching feels himself, so to speak,
linked
to
He
it.
had foreseen and willed
it,
although
hoping to escape it he will, therefore, not retreat except from inconsistency, from weakness of character to which is Undoubtedly he generally given the name of cowardice. who has left his country to escape military service will not ;
—
necessarily be an object of horror to every state
it,
—
one (we must
but he who, having agreed to who, having accepted his task, flees from
while regretting
it)
;
become a soldier danger and turns his back on it at the supreme moment be will be called a coward and a worthless wretch. With all the more reason the same will be said of the officer who had consented, not only to meet death face to face, but to be In the the first to march towards it, to set the example. same way, no doctor can morally epidemic.
refuse his services in an Moral obligation takes the form of a professional
obligation, of a contract freely undertaken, with all the con-
sequences and
we
all
the risks which
advance, the more
be brought back to the science of compensating assurance.
them
And
—
it
implies.*
The
further
economy and sociology risks, and of the means of
will political
in
other words,
to
the
science
of
the more will social morality be brought
back to the art of using to advantage, and for the good of this need of " risking on^s self" which is experienced by •every individual life with any power at all. -Jn other words, we shall endeavour to make those who are economic of themselves all,
feel
assured and undisturbed, and to
make
those
who
are, so
to speak, prodigal of themselves useful.
* The risks can be multiplied incessantly in this way, and may surround one with an even tighter ring, from which one can neither logically nor morally retreat. "The exaltation of sentiments of anger
and of generosity
same proportion as the danger," which he has addressed to us without knowing that we were fundamentally of the same opinion on .all these points (Revue Philosophique, 1882, vol. ii.). rightly
increases in the
remarks M. Espinas
in the objections
EQUIVALENT OF DUTY. But
let
I27
The moral agent may be
US go further.
not face to face with mere
risk,
placed,
but before the certitude of
definite sacrifice.
In certain countries, if the labourer wants to fertilize his he sometimes uses very energetic means he takes his horse, opens his veins, and, whip in hand, drives him fields,
;
into the furrows.
The bleeding
horse drags himself across
under his tottering legs the earth becomes red as he passes, each furrow drinking its share of the blood. When, exhausted, he falls down with rattling throat, he is still forced to get up again, to give the last drop of his blood to the greedy earth. At last he sinks down he is buried in the field, which is still red ; his whole life, his whole being, passes to the revived earth. This sowing with blood becomes a source of wealth the field thus fed will yield corn in abundance a great benefit to the labourer. Things do not happen differently in the history of humanity. the
which
field
lies
;
;
;
—
The
legion of the great unfortunate ones, of the
martyrs
—
all
unknown
these men, whose very misfortune has conduced
all those who have been forced to have freely sought it ; all have passed through the world sowing their lives, shedding their blood. They have made the future pregnant. Often they have
to the welfare of others self-sacrifice,
;
or
been mistaken, and the cause defended was not always worth their sacrifices nothing so sad as to die in vain. But to him who considers the mass, and not the individuals, self-sacrifice is one of the most precious and the most powerful forces in history. To make humanity this great, indolent body progress one step, there has always been needed a shock which has crushed individuals. The humblest, the most ordinary of men, may, therefore, find ;
—
—
himself pladed before the alternative of the certain sacrifice life or of an obligation to be fulfilled. He may be,
of his
not only soldier, but policeman, fireman,
etc.;
and these
which we designate as humble, are of the kind which sometimes demand sublime actions. Now, how can we callings,
MORALITY INDEPENDENT OF OBLIGATION OR SANCTION.
128
demand from anyone
I
the sacrifice of his
life, if
based only on the regular development of ;
;
morality
this
very
is
life ?
There is contradiction in the terms. It is the chief objection which we have elsewhere made to all naturalistic moral philosophy, and to which the necessity of things has again brought
us.
From
the naturalistic point of view at which
we
place
even the act of merely watching over the interests of others is superior to the act of watching our own interests only in so far as it indicates a greater moral capacity, a In any other sense it would only be surplus of inward life.
'ourselves,
a kind of monstrosity, as in those plants which have hardly any leaves or roots nothing but a flower. To be at all
—
command
able to
is
self-sacrifice,
something more precious
Now,
empirically speaking, there
must be found. nothing more precious
than as
life
life
;
value from
it.
It
is
nothing else has the same value this,
and borrows
its
impossible to convince the English
utilitarian that morality, is
;
everything else acknowledges
maintained by the sacrifice of
not analogous to a miser dying to
save
his
life,
treasure.
Nothing more natural than to ask a person to die for you, or an idea, when he has entire faith in immortality, and already feels the growing of his angel's wings ; but what if he does not believe this ? If we had faith, there would be no difficulty it is so easy to be blindfolded A man exclaims " I see, I know, I believe." He sees nothing he knows still less ; but he has the faith which takes the place of it all. He does what faith commands; he goes to the sacrifice, looking up to heaven. Cheerfully he lets oneself be crushed by the wheels of the big social machine and sometimes even without distinct aim for a dream, for an for
;
!
:
—
—
—
error,
as
the Hindus did,
who threw themselves
at full
length under the bloody wheels of the sacred chariot, happy to die under the weight of their gigantic and empty idols.
But how, not having
faith,
can we demand from the
vidual a definite sacrifice, without basing this
indi-
demand on
;
EQUIVALENT OF DUTY.
129
some
principle other than the development of this very life which is to be wholly or partly sacrificed ? Let us begin by recognising that in some extreme cases moreover, very rare ones this problem has no rational and scientific solution. In those cases in which morality is impotent, morality must leave it wholly to the spontaneity
—
—
of the individual.
The
fault of the Jesuits
not so
is
much
wanted to enlarge morality as their having brought in the detestable element of hypocrisy. Before all, one has to be frank with one's self, and with others ; a paradox is not dangerous if it presents itself boldly to all eyes. Every action may be considered as an equation to their having
Now,
be solved.
there are always, in a practical decision,
known terms and unknown but
scientific
terms, which have to be found
morality cannot always
equations, therefore, are insoluble
—
find
these.
or, at least,
Some
do not allow
of an undeniable and categorical solution.
The
of moralists
and universal
is
to pretend to solve in a definite
mistake
way problems which may have a great many peculiar solutions. Let us add that the fundamental unknown something, the X, to be sought in a certain number of problems is death. The solution of the equation presented depends, therefore, on the variable value attached to the other terms, which are (i) physical life to be sacrificed (2) some
—
;
moral act to be accomplished. Let us examine these two terms. The solution depends chiefly, let us say, on the value Undoubtedly life is for everyone the most attached to life. precious of all blessings, because it is the condition of all others ; nevertheless, if the others are reduced almost to naught, life itself loses its value it then becomes a conIf there are two individuals, the one temptible thing.
—
having
lost those
he loved, the other having a large family
whose welfare depends on him, these two are not equal before death.
To
fairly
present this great problem of contempt of
life,
MORALITY INDEPENDENT OF OBLIGATION OR SANCTION.
130
must be compared with another important consideration. more than one point, an analogy with suicide, since in both cases death is consented to, and even desired, by the will of an individual who knows what life means.
it
Self-sacrifice presents, in
To
explain suicide,
we must admit
average enjoyments of
life
is
of
the intensity of certain sufferings equally true ^i
—
viz.,
that the duration of the
value compared to and the converse will be
little ;
that the intensity of certain enjoyments
seems preferable to the whole duration of life. Berlioz represents an artist who kills himself after having known the highest sesthetic joy which he thinks it possible to feel once in his life. This is not so mad an action as one might Suppose it were granted to you to be for an instant think. a Newton discovering his law, or a Jesus preaching love on
—
the rest of your life will then seem colourless you would purchase this instant at the price of Give anyone the choice between living over all the rest. again the monotonous round of his whole life, or living over again the small number of hours which he remembers few people will hesitate. as having been perfectly happy Let us extend the question to the present and the future. There are hours in which the intensity of life is so great that, placed in balance with the whole possible series of
the mountain
and empty
;
;
years, these
hours will turn the
scale.
One
passes three
days in climbing to a high summit of the Alps one finds that the short moment passed on the white summit, in the ;
calm of the sky, is worth these three days of fatigue. There are also moments in life when we seem to be on a mountain-top when we soar; compared with these moments, everything else becomes indifTerent. Life, therefore, even from the positive point of view at which we now place ourselves, has not that measureless value which at first it seemed to have. Sometimes, without being irrational, the totality of existence may be sacrificed for one of its moments, as one single verse may be preferred to the whole poem.
great
—
EQUIVALENT OF DUTY. So long
suicide
as
persists
I3I
among men,
would be
it
inexplicable that there should not be self-sacrifice definite
and without hope. is,
Only one thing
that society should not try to
self-sacrifice as
A certain
much
number
is
to be regretted
;
that
transform suicide into
as possible.*
of perilous enterprises ought always to
be offered to those who are discouraged with life. Human progress will always need for its fulfilment so many individual lives that watch should be kept that no one might lose
it
In the philanthropic institution called the widows devote themselves to the
in vain.
Dames du
Calvaire
nursing of repugnant and contagious illnesses.
advantage of society
— of
more or
This use,
broken by widowhood is an instance of what might be done, of what certainly will be done in the society of the future. There are thousands of persons for whom life has lost its greatest value. These persons could find a for the
and become
Now,
In the same way, there
—
useless
true consolation in self-sacrifice
them.
lives
are
special
all
;
less
use should be
capacities should
capacities
for
made
of
be employed.
perilous
and
dis-
interested occupations, temperaments born to self-forgetful-
ness and always ready to risk themselves.
This capacity a superabundance of moral life. Every time that the moral life of an individual is checked or repressed by its environment, another environfor self-sacrifice has its source in
ment must be discovered possibility of its
employment Besides,
for
it
in
which
it
may
unlimited extension, and of
recover the its
untiring
in the service of humanity.
life
not always being an object of preference,
it
moment when a about to attack some children, a man ran up to him, knocked him down, broke his backbone, and threw him into the Seine. As people wanted this man to have the many wounds which he had * Lately, on the Place des Invalides, at the very
mad dog was
received attended to die because
"
to,
he escaped from the crowd, saying that he wished had broken his heart." There ought to be no
his wife
other kind of suicide.
132
MORALITY INDEPENDENT OF OBLIGATION OR SANCTION.
may become,
in certain cases, an object of disgust and of There is a sentiment peculiar to man which has We have already called it hitherto not been well analyzed. Through the influence of the sentiment of intolerability. attention and of reflection, certain physical, and, above all,
horror.
certain moral sufferings, increase in our consciousness to
such a degree as to obscure everything pain
sufficient to efface
is
man
all
the
One
else.
many
single
pleasures of
life.
he chooses, to be the most unhappy animal in creation, because of the Now, one of tenacity he can communicate to his pains. the sentiments which possesses to the highest degree this character of intolerability is that of shame, of moral Life, for instance, bought at the cost of shame failure. may seem unbearable. The objection will be made that a truly epicurean or utilitarian philosopher can afford to look with a certain disdain at those sentiments of moral shame which are always rather conventional. But we would Probably
has this privilege of being able,
if
reply that they are far less conventional than a great
others
—
ruined
many
money. Daily you see becomes unbearable, and
for instance, the lust of
people
philosophy
is
whom
to
life
of small service to them.
Besides, there
is
a kind of moral ruin far more terrible in every way than That which is merely pleasant as this or that the other. pleasure of
life,
and even
as the
sum
of
life's
pleasures, can
never compensate for that which rightly or wrongly seems to be intolerable. Certain particular spheres of activity
important in
become
finally so
that they cannot
be attacked without touching life at its very source. We cannot imagine Chopin without his piano to have forbidden him music would have meant killing him. Likewise, existence would probably not have been bearable for Raphael without forms, colours, life
;
and a brush to reproduce them. way as important as life itself, morality should have, in
becomes in this need not astonish that the eyes of man, a still higher value. If art
it
EQUIVALENT OF DUTY.
Here
there
than in
artistic
really a
Those
sentiment.
completely dead than nevertheless those
if
whom
33
wider-reaching sphere of activity
still
some vanity and find yet more
If the sceptic finds
moral sentiment, he
the
in
is
art.
1
illusion
whom
art
the
in
will
has killed are more
they had died for humanity, and art
has killed and
will yet kill are
be a greater number of those who sacrifice themselves for a moral ideal. Let us suppose a tree, a branch of which becomes enormously developed, and even takes root in the surrounding earth as happens
many.
There ought
to
—
In the long run, the even hide the very trunk it is the branch
in the case of the giant tree of India.
branch will which seems to support and to sustain the trunk. Likewise the moral and intellectual life is a kind of shoot, a powerful branch of the physical life. It developes to such an extent in the social environment that an individual killed, so to speak, in his moral life seems by that to be more completely crushed it is like a trunk having lost all its strength ;
;
and the
foliage
very
—a
motives of
eternally true
To lose, in order to live, The lines of Juvenal are him who rejects the stoic doctrines.
true corpse.
even
for
"
life !"
The most disabused tain rule of
sceptic still imposes on himself a cerconduct which dominates his life at any rate a
practical ideal.
—
Life at certain
moments may not seem
him worthy of being preserved by the renunciation of last trace
If in
of the ideal.
no
single doctrine the
moral
sentiment, in itself
alone, can give true positive happiness to our sensibility,
nevertheless capable of making happiness without sible,
and
to
this
this is practically sufficient.
it
it is
impos-
For beings who have
arrived at a certain degree of moral evolution happiness
no longer
Therefore, the moral sentiment has
reason It
of
its
destructive
may be compared
passions
;
is
desirable outside the sphere of their ideal.
than
of
still
greater value by
its
creative
with a great love extinguishing
without this love
life is
intolerable
power. all
other
and impossible
— MORALITY INDEPENDENT OF OBLIGATION OR SANCTION.
134 to US.
On
the other hand,
we know
that
it
will
not be
be so. It is customary to pity those who in their hearts feel such love a love without hope, which nothing can satisfy ; and yet we all cherish quite as powerful a love for our moral ideal, from which we cannot rationally expect any sanction. This love returned, neither
can
it
be,
nor should
it
always seem vain, from an utilitarian point of view,
will
it must not hope for satisfaction, for reward ; but, from a higher point of view, these satisfactions and pretended compensations may, in their turn, disappear as mere
since
vanity.
To sum up, the value of life is something quite variable, which may sometimes be reduced to nought to less than nought. Moral action, on the contrary, has always a certain value. It is rare that a being falls low enough to do, for instance, an act of cowardice with perfect indifference, or even with pleasure. Now, to form an idea of the value which the moral act may acquire in certain cases, we must remember that man or, as we have said before, a philosophic is a thinking animal animal. Positive morality cannot take into account all the metaphysical hypotheses which it pleases man to make on Moreover, an exclusively scientific the basis of things. moral philosophy cannot give a definite and complete solution of moral obligation. One has always to get beyond mere experience. The luminous vibrations of the ether pass from Sirius to my eye, that is a fact ; but have I to open my Simply to open it eye or to shut it to receive them ?
—
—
not reveal the law
of the vibrations
of
light. In understand but have I to completely open myself to that of others others, or have I to keep myself partly shut up? This is
will
the
same
way,
my
consciousness
gets
to
;
a problem, the practical solution of which will depend on the personal hypothesis which I shall have made of the
and of my relation to other beings. Only these hypotheses must remain absolutely free and personal, and universe,
METAPHYSICAL RISK IN SPECULATION. it
is
1
35
impossible to systematize them into a metaphysical
doctrine, which reason.
We
would impose
will
itself
universally
on human
see how, thanks to the strength of the
individual hypothesis, there
is
no absolute
sacrifice
which
may
not become, not only possible, but, in certain cases, almost easy.
CHAPTER
11.
from Metaphysical The Hypothesis.
Fifth Equivalent of Duty, derived Rislc.
METAPHYSICAL RISK IN SPECULATION.
We
have shown the considerable practical influence which there remains for us to ; see the influence, no less great, of that which Plato called the KaAos KtvSvijos, of the great metaphysical risk in which the
the pleasure of danger or risk has
mind
loves to disport
itself.
In order that I may reason out to the very end certain moral acts which go beyond the average and scientific morality, in order that I
may
strictly
deduct them from
philosophical or religious principles, these principles them-
be settled and determined. But this can only be done by hypothesis ; therefore, I myself must establish Given the unthe metaphysical reasons of my actions. knowable, the X of the essence of things, I must represent this to myself in some way, and conceive it according to If, for the image of the act which I wish to accomplish. instance, I want to do an act of pure and definite charity, and if I should wish to justify this act rationally, I must imagine an eternal charity inherent in the very heart of things, and of myself; I must render the sentiment which selves should
136
MORALITY INDEPENDENT OF OBLIGATION OR SANCTION.
induces
me
The moral agent here
to act objective.
plays
same part as the artist ; he must convey to others the tendencies which he inwardly feels, and, out of his love, create a metaphysical poem. The unknowable and neutral X is the counterpart of the marble shaped by the sculptor, of the inert words which, in the poet's stanza, are arranged, and become alive. The artist shapes but the form of the
things
the moral being
;
—which always a metaphysician, — shapes the very essence of is
either spontaneous or deliberate things, builds
up
would seem
upon the model of his conception and gives to this act, which otherwise
eternity
of the act of one day,
hang in the
to
air,
a root
the world of
in
thought.
The noumenon, in the moral and not purely negative we ourselves make it acquires a moral value only by virtue of the type according to which we represent it to ourselves of our metait is a construction of our mind sense,
;
—
;
physical imagination.
Will
it
be said that there
this effort to give type
without form or hold
view
?
this is possible.
is
something
and form
From
to that
like child's play in
which
is
essentially
a narrowly scientific point of
In heroism there is always a kind of Every human action contains of illusion. Perhaps this element
simple and grand artlessness.
an element of
error,
increases in proportion as the action rises above the average.
The most
loving hearts are those which have been
deceived
the greatest geniuses are those which exhibit the
;
most inconsistencies. children.
What
The
martyrs were
often
most
sublime
childishness in the ideas of the alchemists,
who nevertheless,
in the end, created a science It was partly consequence of an error that Christopher Columbus discovered America. Metaphysical theories must not be judged according to their absolute truth, which can never !
in
be
verified
;
but one of the ways of judging them
appreciate their fecundity.
Do
not, therefore,
be true independently of ourselves
and our
is
to
ask them
to
but
to
actions,
— METAPHYSICAL RISK IN SPECULATION. become
true.
A
error may, in this sense,
fertile
137
be more
true from the point of view of universal evolution than a
too narrow and barren truth.
think that
M. Homais
is
right,
It is sad, says
and
M. Renan,
to
that he has recognised
the truth from the very beginning, without effort and without
by simply looking at his feet. Well, no M. Homais shut up as he is in his small circle of positive verities. He may have been quite able to cultiver son jardin, but he looked upon his garden as the world, and he was mistaken. It would perhaps have been much better for him if he had fallen in love with a star, or been haunted by some kind of absolutely visionary chimera which, at least, would have made him realize something great. Undoubtedly Vincent de Paul had his mind filled with more idle dreams than M. Homais but it has been found that the small portion of truth contained in his dreams was more fruitful than the number of common-sense truths apprehended by M. Homais. Metaphysics is, in the domain of thought, what luxury and outlay are, with regard to art, in the domain of economics. It is a thing all the more useful, as it seems at first less necessary. We might do without it, but we should lose much by it. We do not know exactly where it begins, still less do we know where it ends and yet humanity will always move in that direction along an irresistible and easy slope. Moreover, there are certain cases, as economists have shown, in which luxury suddenly becomes a necessity ; in which we need, in order to face life, that which before was superfluous. Similarly, there are circumstances in which practice suddenly needs metaphysics. We can neither live, nor, merit,
is
not
;
right,
;
;
above
all,
different
die without
worlds
—the
it.
Reason
gives us glimpses of two
real world, in
which we
a certain ideal world, in which we also
live,
and
which our mind incessantly acquires new vigour, and which it is
impossible not to take into account. ideal world people
no longer agree
;
live,
in
Only, in regard to the
everyone has his
own
138
MORALITY INDEPENDENT OF OBLIGATION OR SANCTION.
conception of
it;
some deny
Yet on the
altogether.
it
conception we have of the metaphysical essence of things
depends the way in which we compel ourselves to act. In fact, a great number of the most noble human actions have been accomplished in the name of religious or metaphysical
morality.
It
is,
therefore, impossible to neglect
this very fruitful source of
activity.
But
is
it
none the
impossible to impose upon activity a fixed rule derived from one single doctrine instead of absolutely regulating the less
;
application of metaphysical ideas,
it is
only of importance
them their legitimate without allowing any encroachment upon that of
to fix their boundaries, to assign to
sphere,
positive morality.
In moral philosophy
to reckon with metaphysical speculation, as politics
is
it it is
necessary
necessary in
and sociology to take economical speculation into Only it is, in the first place, necessary to be quite that its domain is that of sacrifice, practically unprofor the individual, of absolute devotion, from an point of view. The domain of economic speculation
account. certain ductive
earthly is,
on the
with
contrary, that of reproductive sacrifice of risk run
some
In the second place,
interest as its aim.
it
is
In fact, I know a thing by hypothesis, and according to a personal for calculation of probability I infer from it another thing
necessary to
leave
it
its
hypothetical character.
—
instance, that disinterestedness
is
the root of
selfishness merely the surface, or vice versA.
my
being,
and
By deduction
law of conduct. This law is a and I feel rationally obliged to follow it. Only as long as the hypothesis seems In this to me the most probable, the most true for me. way a kind of rational and non-categorical imperative is obtained, dependent on an hypothesis. In the third place, it must be admitted that this hypothesis may vary according to individuals and to intellectual temperaments. It is the absence of fixed law which may be designated by the word anomy, in opposition to the autonomy I derive
from
this a rational
simple consequence of
my
hypothesis,
;
METAPHYSICAL RISK IN SPECULATION.
By
of the followers of Kant. gorical imperative,
1
39
the suppression of the cate-
and
disinterestedness
self-sacrifice
are
but their object will vary. One person will devote himself to this cause, another to a different one. not suppressed
;
Bentham devoted his whole life to the idea of self-interest is one way of devoting one's self. He subordinated
that
to the study of that which was useful to and necessarily also useful to others. The result is that he has been really very useful as useful, and even more so, than many an apostle of disinterestedness, such as all his faculties
himself,
—
St.
Theresa.
Hypothesis produces practically the same effect as faith even gives rise to a subsequent faith whichf however, is not affirmative and dogmatic like the other. Moral philo--
—
;
sophy, which at
summit
its
bases
naturalistic
is
and
positive, rises
There is one unchangeable moral philosophy that of facts ; and, to complete it, when it is not sufficient, there is a variable and at its
into the sphere of free metaphysic.
—
individual moral philosophy
Thus the old
—
that of hypotheses.
shaken. Man, freed by the doubt of all absolute obligation, partly recovers his liberty. Kant began a revolution in moral philosophy when he wanted to make the will " autonomous," instead of making it
bow
He
apodictic law
before a law exterior to
is
itself
;
but he stopped halfway.
believed that the individual liberty of the moral agent
could be reconciled with the universality of the law
;
that
everyone must conform to a fixed type ; that the ideal " reign " of liberty would be a regular and methodical
government. But in the " reign of liberty " good order is maintained, simply because no order is imposed beforehand,
nor any preconceived arrangement. Consequently, starting from the point where positive moral philosophy stops, there may be the greatest possible diversity of action and the The true " autonomy " greatest variety of ideals pursued. must produce individual originality, and not universal uniformity.
If
everyone establishes a law for himself, why
I40
MORALITY INDEPENDENT OF OBLIGATION OR SANCTION.
should there not be several laws possible of Bentham and that of Kant ?*
The
greater the
number
—
for instance, that
of different doctrines which offer
themselves to the choice of humanity, the greater will be The evolution the value of the future and final agreement. of mind, as well as material evolution,
is
always a transition
from the homogeneous to the heterogeneous. If the intelligence is reduced to complete uniformity, the intelligence itself will be annihilated. Shape all minds in the same mould, give them the same creeds, the same religion, the same metaphysics, pull the human brain by a string, and you go precisely against the essential tendency of progress. Nothing is Aiore monotonous and insipid than a town with all its streets alike, and laid out in straight lines ; and those who imagine the intellectual city to be of that type suffer from a misconception. It is said " Truth is one ; the ideal of thought is this very unity, this uniformity.^' Absolute truth is an abstraction, like the perfect triangle or the perfect circle of the mathematicians. In reality, everything will
:
is infinitely
people
who
multiplex.
number of sum of truth
Besides, the greater the
think differently, the greater
is
the
which they finally will apprehend, and over which they will be reconciled to one another. Diversity of opinion must not be feared, therefore on the contrary, it must be encouraged. Two men have a different way of thinking, at last
;
perhaps if
;
all
the better, they are
they both thought the same.
much
see the whole of a landscape, there * Let
nearer to truth than
If several persons is
want to
only one way, and
be well understood that we have never dreamed of conand other critics have reproached us for doing, all metaphysical hypotheses as equal for human thought. There is an abstract logic of the hypotheses from which point of view they may be classified or arranged according to the scale of probabiliAll the same, their practical force will not, for a long time to ties. it
sidering, as Messrs. Boirac, Lauret,
come, correspond exactly with their theoretical value. on "The Progress of Metaphysical Hypotheses" " L'Irreligion de I'Avenir.")
(See the chapter in
our volume,
METAPHYSICAL RISK IN SPECULATION. that
back
to turn their
is,
out as scouts, and
all
141
one another. If soldiers are sent same way, observing only
to
turn the
one point of the horizon, they will most
likely return without
having discovered anything.
Truth point
like light.
is
does not come to us from one
It
by
reflected
it is
;
all
same time
objects at the
and
us from every direction,
;
it
a thousand ways. We should want a hundred eyes to catch all its beams. Humanity as a whole has millions of eyes and ears. Do strikes
not advise It
in
to shut them, or to listen
it
must open them
The
directions.
all at
the same time
on one side
—turn
only.
them
in all
of the points of view ought to
infinity
The
correspond with the
infinity
doctrines proves the
wealth and the power of thought.
Moreover,
variety,
this
must increase of harmony.
in
from
far
Division are
that
so
details,
labour
intellectual
of things.
decreasing
with
may end
it
and
thought
of
necessary
as
variety of
time, chords-
in
diversity
division
as
of
and
manual work.
This division of labour is the In bygone times thought was infinitely less divided than in our days ; all had imbibed the same superstitions, the same dogmas, the same falsehoods. If one met an individual, one could beforehand, diversity of
condition of
wealth.
all
and, without knowing
say
it,
:
" Such
is
his
creed
;"
one
could count up the absurdities of his brain, draw up the
Even
balance-sheet of his mind.
in our days
both of the inferior and superior
beyond
this
;
classes,
many
people,
have not got
their intelligence is of the conventional type.
Happily, the number of these minds, inert and without diminishes
spring,
increases
;
own law and
own
his
far as that, there
ever
—
I
daily
;
the
rdle
played
by
almost everyone shows a tendency to
mean no
creed.
If only
initiative
make
we could once
his.
get so
would no longer be any orthodoxy whatgeneral faith, lumping all minds together.
—
Oh, that faith might become wholly individual that heterodoxy might become the true and universal religion L
— MORALITY INDEPENDENT OF OBLIGATION OR SANCTION.
142
Religious
seems
(and every absolute moral philosophy form of religion) this society, united
society
be the
to
—
last
by community of superstitions, is a social form belonging to ancient times, which tends to disappear, and which it would be strange to take as ideal. Kings are disappearing and priests go also. Theocracy may well try to solely
;
some compromise with the new order of things some other kind constitutional theocracy can no more definitely satisfy reason than constibring about
to establish concordats of
:
The French spirit, above all, is not arrangements of compromise, with halfmeasures, with anything which is but partially just and true. In any case, it will not look in that direction for its With regard to reHgion and to metaphysics, the true ideal.
tutional monarchy. easily satisfied with
ideal
is
absolute independence of
mind and
free diversity
of doctrines.
To
wish to rule minds
bodies
;
is still
worse than to wish to rule " authority over con-
we must shun every kind of
science " or " authority over thought " as a veritable curse.
Authoritative metaphysics fit
for childish people.
that
and
It is
religions are leading-strings
time that we should walk alone,
we should have a horror
of
sham
apostles,
of mis-
time that we should be our own guides, and that we should look for " revelation"
sionaries, of preachers of all kinds
There
;
it is
no Christ now.
Let every one according to Let every his own choice and abilities, or even deny God. one conceive the universe according to a type which appears monarchy, oligarchy, republic, to him the most probable All these hypotheses can be maintained, therefore or chaos. they must be maintained. It is not absolutely impossible within ourselves.
of us be his
own
Christ,
is
bind himself to
God
—
that one of
them
will
some day
on its side means of them, turn the human minds it is not imposcollect together
the greatest probabilities, and, by scale in the
most cultivated
negation.
;
should be a doctrine of But we must not encroach upon so problematic
sible that this privileged doctrine
METAPHYSICAL RISK IN SPECULATION.
a
and
I43
by doing away with revealed humanity will be suddenly thrown into atheism and moral scepticism. In the intellectual order there can be no violent and sudden revolution, but only an evolution, more accentuated every year. It is just this slowness of the mind in running through the whole chain of reasoning from one end to the other which, in the social order, makes too sudden revolufuture,
religion
tions
believe that,
or
categorical
come
to nothing.
duty,
Likewise,
men whom we have
when
concerns pure
it
and who most revolutionary those whose thoughts are boldest. We ought to admire them without dread ; they can do so little The storm which they raise in a small corner of the ocean will hardly produce any perceptible undulation on the immense mass. On the other
speculation, the
are
most
to fear least,
—
useful, are the
!
hand, in practical matters the revolutionary
make
spirits
always
mistakes, because they always believe truth to be too
simple, because they are too confident of themselves,
and
imagine that they have found and fixed the end and aim of human progress. Whereas real progress is to have no end; is to reach those ends which one has put before one's self, only to transform them
;
problems only by changing
to solve
their given terms.
Happy, therefore, are those to-day to whom a Christ would say, " Oh, ye of little faith !" if that means sincere men who do not want to allure their reason and debase their dignity as intelligent beings
and philosophic mind, who their eyes
and
their
minds,
to test their sensations
only people
who might
and
;
men
of a truly scientific
distrust appearances,
who to
examine
possess
who distrust
incessantly begin over again
some
their reasonings
;
the
particle of the eternal
because they never imagine they have the whole truth people who have sufficient resX faith to always go on searching, instead of resting and exclaiming, " I have found it !" brave people, who walk on when others It is such as these who have the. future stop or go to sleep. truth, precisely ;
MORALITY INDEPENDENT OF OBLIGATION OR SANCTION.
144
them
before
;
is
it
they
who
mould the humanity of
will
the ages to come.
The
of to-day understands
morality
tence to rule the whole of
human
life
its
impo-
partial
absolutely,
and
in
advance ; it leaves a larger sphere to individual liberty it does not threaten except in a sufficiently rare number of cases, and only when the absolutely necessary conditions of ;
all social life
are concerned.
Philosophers no longer agree
who regulated who forbade every of moral command-
with the rigorous moral philosophy of Kant, everything by the tribunal of conscience, transgression, every free interpretation
ments.
sacrilege,
form
was a moral philosophy similar to the ritualist which count any failure in ceremonial as a and which forget the essence for the sake of the was a kind of moral despotism, creeping every-
It
religions,
it
;
where, wanting to rule everything.
At present the rigorous law of Kant's philosophy in many minds, but no longer makes itself
reigns
in details
it is
;
recognised in theory, but in practice
often necessary to deviate from
whose frown was
Jupiter
a
prince,
liberal
danger.
Is
It
it.
sufficient to
whom we may
is
move
still
felt it
is
no longer the the world
disobey without
there not something higher than
this
;
it
is
much mock
and must not man, when he reaches the borders of moral philosophy and of metaphysics, reject all absolute
royalty,
supremacy, in order to frankly approach individual speculation
?
The violent
more
coarser a mechanism, the greater the need of a and coarse motive-power to set it in motion ; in a delicate mechanism the finger-tip is sufficient to
produce considerable
To make
effect.
same with humanity. enormous promises had and the veracity of these
It is the
the ancient nations move,
at first to
be made by
religion,
promises had to be guaranteed. It spoke to them of mountains of gold, and streams of milk and honey. Would Ferdinand Cortez have conquered' Mexico if he had not
METAPHYSICAL RISK IN SPECULATION.
I45
believed he should see the glitter of the supposed golden
domes people,
of Mexico in brilliant
distance?
the
images,
glittering
before their eyes, as scarlet
In order to excite
colours, were dangled
held out before a bull. At needed to conquer the natural
is
that time a robust faith was inertia.
was wanted. One touched one's god one ate, one drank him. Then one could quietly die for him, and with him. Later on, duty seemed, and still seems to many, a divine thing a voice from heaven, which is heard within us, which speaks to us, commands us. The Scotch even talked of moral "sense," of moral " tact.'" This coarse conception was still needed To-day a mere hypothesis, a to conquer coarse instincts. simple possibility, is sufficient to attract and fascinate us. The martyr no longer requires to know if he will receive palms in heaven, or if a categorical law commands his self-sacrifice. One dies, not to conquer the whole truth, but Something
certain
with one's finger
;
—
the least of for
its
elements
a calculation.
;
a
Ardour
man
of science sacrifices himself
in research supplies the place of
certainty in the object sought
;
enthusiasm takes the place
of religious /a///4 and moral law.
The
which we want to realize its immediate reality. If we hope for something very great, we derive from the beauty of the aim the courage to defy obstacles; if the chances of its attainment decrease, the desire to do so The further the ideal is removed increases in proportion. from reality, the more desirable it seems ; and, as the desire itself is the supreme force, it has command over the loftiness
of the
ideal
supersedes the energy of faith in
maximum of force. The vulgar gifts
of
life
are
worth so
little
that,
in
comparison with these, the conceived ideal must seem immense ; all our little enjoyments become as nothing This before the supreme one of realizing a noble thought. thought, even if it has no meaning with regard to nature or
;
MORALITY INDEPENDENT OF OBLIGATION OR SANCTION.
146
may mean
science, is
everything with regard to ourselves
the farthing of the poor.
"
To
search for Truth "
—
;
it
this
action no longer contains anything conditional, doubtful, or
We have got hold of something, not of the truth undoubtedly (who will ever get hold of it completely ?), but at least of the spirit which enables us to discover it. If we obstinately stop at some doctrine, which is always too narrow, it is like a shadow, disappearing with every change fragile.
itself,
of light
;
but always to advance steadily, always to search,
—
this alone is no mere shadow. The truth is found by moving forward, by hoping ; and it is not without reason that a " philosophy of hope " has been suggested as a complement to positive moral philosophy.* A child saw a blue butterfly resting on a blade of grass ; The child the butterfly was benumbed by the north wind. picked the blade of grass, and the living flower at the end
always hope to be
benumbed, could not fly away. The child up its chance prize. A sunbeam touched the wing of the butterfly, and suddenly, revived and gay, the living blossom flew away towards the light. We all, seekers and workers we are like the butterfly our strength is made only of a ray of light nay, only of the hope of a ray of light. We must, therefore, know how to hope hope is the force which bears us upward and forward. But it is an illusion How do we know that ? Must we not move a step, for fear that some day the earth will disappear from of
it,
still
returned, holding
—
:
;
;
!
under our feet?
It is
future, or into the past
must note there the and we must act.
;
not sufficient to look far into the we must look into ourselves. We
vital forces
which demand to be spent
See M. Fouillee, " La Science Sociale Contemporaine,"
livre v.
METAPHYSICAL RISK IN ACTION.
1
47
METAPHYSICAL RISK IN ACTION.
We
" In the beginning was action," says Faust. at the end.
thoughts,
If
find
it
also
our actions are in accordance with our
we may
also say that
our thoughts
exactly to the expansion of our activity.
correspond
The most
abstract
metaphysical systems are themselves but formulas of feeling,
and
feeling corresponds to the greater or lesser tension of inward activity. There is a middle term between doubt and faith, between incertitude and categorical affirmation it is action. By it only can the uncertain realize itself and become a reality. I do not ask you to blindly believe in an ideal ; I ask you to work towards its realization without
—
believing in
so as to believe in
it,
you have striven
it.
You
will believe in
produce it. All the ancient religions have wanted to make us believe by means of our eyes and our ears. They have shown us
it if
to
God in flesh and bone. Saint Thomas and those resembling him have touched him with their fingers, and they have been convinced. In these days we can no longer be convinced in this way. We should look, we should listen, we should even touch with our finger, only to deny yet more obstinately. One is
not convinced of an impossible thing because one thinks
one
sees or touches
it.
Our reason
is
now
strong enough
and miracles Therefore, a new way of no longer convince anybody. persuasion is wanted, which even religions have already used to their benefit. This way is action you believe in proportion as you work. But action must not consist of outward practices and coarse rites it must have a wholly inward source then only will our faith come truly from Its symbol will be not the within not from without. to
scoff at the
need
to actually see things
;
;
;
;
—
routine of a
rite,
but the
infinite
variety of invention, of
and spontaneous creation. Humanity has long waited for God
individual
to appear,
and when
MORALITY INDEPENDENT OF OBLIGATION OR SANCTION.
148
he appeared
at last is
over
now
;
a house,
like
built
towards
was not God.
it
The time
of waiting
ready depends on us to labour together If the idea is not
the time for work.
is
it
construction. " I all say
its
hope because I believe, and because an external revelation." We must say I believe because I hope, and I hope because I feel in myself a wholly internal energy, which will have to be taken into Religions
•
I believe in
:
Why
account in the problem. the question
known
the
with
self
regard to
whatever.
revelation
deep
of
silence
inwardly
will,
and
and
hear no " word
I
is
it
the
is
but
things,
It is action alone
in others,
look only at one side of
unknown world, there is I do not know what I am capable of outward things, and I have received no there
If
?
my
will
which gives us confidence the world.
in
echoing in the
"
do know that which I which constitutes my power. I
in ourselves,
Abstract meditation, solitary
thought, in the end weaken the vital forces.
we remain
If
too long on the mountain-tops, a kind of fever of infinite
we wish never to descend again, The eyelids droop sleepiness, we cannot easily wake
weariness takes hold of us
we wish
to stop
but, if
we
up
again.
where we
;
are, to rest.
;
give
way
The
penetrating cold of the summits freezes the
very marrow
to
of our bones.
The
and painful was really
indolent
ecstasy which threatened to take possession of us
the beginning of death.
Action
is
have
its
all,
the true remedy for a pessimism, which may, after share of truth
plaining, not so
much
That which
not.
evil.
life.
It is
As
to
utility, if
of what
exists
principal object of
an
and
Pessimism, in
sense of the word.
in life
life
human
sorrow, it
itself
is
that
and
they seek after
truth,
and
life
simply
of com-
what
life
is
in itself is not
the
negation
men would
either for themselves or those dear to
death
as of
is,
but rarely constitutes the
death,
not death
taken in the highest
reality, consists
them
to see
;
of
ever desire,
but through
God,
etc.
The
;
METAPHYSICAL RISK IN ACTION. wishing
child
reach
to
and
of-an-hour,
moon
the
then consoles
possess eternity, cries also
—
cries
I49
at least, inwardly
philosopher he writes a big book
a quarter-
for
Man, wishing
itself.
;
if
he
to is
a
he is a poet, he writes a poem if he is incapable, he does nothing at all. At last he consoles himself, and begins life once more, indifferent to if
;
;
everything. it
is
Indifferent
in the
main
— no,
the desire for the infinite it
is
precisely because
;
it
for
he cares
for life
True pessimism
pleasant.
is
;
after
really
all,
but
is but infinite hope and inextinguishable
noble despair infinite
is
that it changes into despair. What does the consciousness of suffering for the most part amount to in the end ? To the thought that it will be possible to escape from it to the conception of a better state of things that is to say, to a kind of ideal. Evil is the feeling of impotence. It ;
—
would prove the impotence of God
God
existence of
one granted the man, it, on the Suffering becomes
if
but, with regard to
;
contrary, proves his
relative
power.
mark of a kind of superiority. The only being who speaks and thinks is also the only one capable of crying.
the
A poet
has said " the ideal takes
May
suffer."
moral
suffering,
sufferings
which gives
In
?
superiority
its rise among those who not be this very ideal which gives rise to
it
;
it is
fact,
man
certain
not everyone
full
consciousness of his
sufferings
who
is
are
a mark
of
thus able to suffer.
Great souls with broken hearts resemble the bird struck by It gives a shriek which fills in its highest flight.
an arrow
it is dying, and yet it soars. Leopardi, Heine, or Lenau would probably not have exchanged those hours of anguish in which they composed their finest songs for the Dante suffered, as much as it greatest possible enjoyment. is possible to suffer, from pity, when he wrote these lines on Francesca de Rimini. Which of us would not undergo a
the skies
similar
There
;
suffering? is
Some
heartaches are infinitely sweet.
likewise a point at
pleasure seem to taingle.
which keen pain and keen of agony and those
The spasms
'
MORALITY INDEPENDENT OF OBLIGATION OR SANCTION.
150
The
of love are not without analogy.
heart breaks with joy
as well as with pain. Sufferings productive of
good are accom-
panied by ineffable joy ; they resemble those sobs which, rendered by the music of a master, become harmony. To suffer
and
self a new power Aurora sculptured by
to create is to feel in one's
by
called forth
It is like the
pain.
Michael-Angelo which, opening
seems but to see the
light
its
through
light of sorrowful days is yet light
eyes filled with tears,
Yes ; but this worth being looked
its tears.
;
it is
at.
Action, in ticism
;
it
How
certitude. I shall
be
its
productiveness,
forms in
do
itself,
I
alive within
as
know
is
also a
we have if I
an hour,
remedy
seen,
its
for scep-
own inward
be alive to-morrow, if will be able to Life from all sides is surshall
if
my hand
which I begin ? rounded by the unknown. Nevertheless, I act, I work, I undertake and in all my acts, in all my thoughts, I presuppose that future upon which nothing gives me a right to count. My activity extends every minute beyond the present instant projects into the future. I expend my energy without fearing that this expenditure may be pure loss I impose privations on myself, counting on the future This incertitude, to compensate me for them ; I go my way. which is pressing on me equally from all sides, is, for me, equivalent to a certitude, and makes my liberty possible ; it finish this line
;
—
;
one of the foundations of speculative moral philosophy? all its risks. My thought goes before it, so does my activity ; it sets the world to rights, disposes of the future. is
with
It seems to make me master of the infinite, because my power has no equivalent in any other fixed quantity the more I achieve, the more I hope. Action, in order to possess the advantages which we have just attributed to it, should undertake some precise work, and, to a certain extent, some work which lies near at hand. To do good, not so much to the whole,wo rid or the world ;
of humanity, as to certain definite people
;
to relieve actual
;
METAPHYSICAL RISK IN ACTION. misery, to lighten someone's burden deceive.
We know
151
—
such things cannot what we are doing; we know that the aim
—
be worth our efforts not in the sense that the result will be of considerable importance in the mighty stream of things, but in the sense that there certainly will be a result, and a good result that our action will not be lost in the infinite, like a small cloud in the monotonous blue of the atmosphere. To do away with some suffering, that is in itself a sufficient aim for a human being. By so doing we change an infinitesimal part of the total sum of pain in the universe. Pity remains inherent in the heart of man, vibrating in his deepest instincts even when purely rational justice and universalized charity sometimes seem to lose their foundations. Even while doubting, one may love even in the intellectual night, which prevents our pursuing any far-reaching aim, we may stretch out a helping hand to those around us who suffer.
will
obtained
;
—
—
THIRD BOOK.
THE IDEA OF SANCTION.
CHAPTER Criticism of Natural Sanction
Humanity
its
sanction.
vice rationally brings in
4
and of Moral Sanction.
has nearly always considered the moral law as
inseparable from
a kind of
I.
its
or happiness.
right,
In the eyes of most moralists
train suffering
The
;
virtue constitutes
idea of sanction, more-
now, been one of the primitive and essential morality. According to the Stoics and the followers of Kant, sanction, it is true, does not by any means serve to lay down the law nevertheless, it is the over, has,
till
notions of
all
;
necessary complement of the law.
According to Kant,
every reason, being a priori, unites by synthetic judgment
misfortune to vice, and happiness to virtue.
Such
is,
in the
opinion of Kant, the force and the legitimacy of this judg-
ment
that, if
will, it
human
would
first,
society dissolved itself of
before the dispersion of
its
its
own
free
members,
have to execute the last criminal shut up in its prisons. It ought to pay off this debt of punishment, which is firstly its own debt and afterwards that of God. Even certain determinist moralists, while in the demerit, this
seem
still
main denying merit and need in
to see a legitimate intellectual
tendency of humanity to consider every act as followed
by sanction.
Lastly,
Sidgwick
seem
the
—
utilitarians for instance, Mr. admit some mystical link between such and such a kind of conduct and such or such a happy,
—
also
to
;
THE IDEA OF SANCTION. or unhappy, state of sensibility.
name
possible, in the
to the pains
153
Mr. Sidgwick believes it make an appeal
of utiUtarianism, to
and rewards of a future life. Moral law, without would seem to him to end in a " funda-
definite sanction,
mental contradiction."* is one of the principles of human be found in the essence of every religion Christian, Pagan, or Buddhist. There is no religion which has not a Providence ; and a Providence is
As
the idea of sanction
morality,
is
it
also to
—
but a kind of distributive
justice,
which, after having acted
incompletely in this world, takes
This distributive justice sanction.
may be
It
,
—that
of this belief
is
its
revenge in another
!
what the moralists understand by
)
said that religion consists essentially
it is
every moral act; in
a sanction metaphysically linked to
other terms,
the profound
that in
order of things there must exist a proportion between the
good or bad
'
state of will
On
and the good
or
bad
state of the
and morality seem to coincide their mutual demands seem to agree and, moreover, morality seems to be completed by religion. The idea of distributive justice and of sanction, generally sensibility.
given
the
first
this point, therefore, religion
—
place
in
our moral conceptions, in
fact
naturally appeals, under one form or another, to a divine justice.
We
wish to sketch here a criticism of this important idea
of sanction, so as to purify Is
it
it
of any kind of mystical alliance.
true that there exists a natural
and
rational link
between
the morality of the will and a reward or a suffering caused to Hoe. sensibility 1
In other terms,
is
it
right to associate
merit with enjoyment, demerit with suffering
?
This
is
the
problem, which can be also put in the form of an example, if
we ask
:
Does there
exist
any
sort of reason (exclusive
of social considerations) that the greatest criminal should receive, because of his crime, a simple pin-prick, *
See our " Morale Anglaise Contemporaine " (second
and the
edition).
I
/
i
154
MORALITY INDEPENDENT OF OBLIGATION OR SANCTION.
man a prize for his virtue ? Has the moral agent the right (exclusive of questions of utiUty or moral
virtuous itself
hygiene), having regard to
itself,
to punish for the sake of
punishing, or to reward for the sake of rewarding 1
A
should like to show
how
which ordinary morality
We
morally condemnable is the idea and religion give of sanction.
From
the social point of view, the truly rational sanction of a law could only be a defence of this law, and this defence, useless with regard to every past act, we shall find bears
From the moral point of view, sanction seems simply to mean, according to its actual etymology, consecration, sanctification. Now, if for those who admit a only on the future.
and sacred character of the must imply, according to the idea which we have to day of holiness and of ideal divinity, a sort of supreme renunciation and of disinterestedness. The more sacred the law, the more disarmed it must be so that, taken in the absolute and apart from social conventions, true sanction must seem to be the moral law
it is
really the holy
law which gives
it
force as law, this
;
complete impunity of the thing done. We shall also see Morethat all penal justice, properly so called, is unjust. over, all distributive justice has an exclusively social character, and can only be justified from the point of view of society.
In a general way, that which we call justice is a human and relative notion only charity or pity
completely
;
(without the pessimistic significance which Schopenhauer gives
it) is
a truly universal idea which nothing can limit or
restrict.
I.
NATURAL SANCTION.
The
classic moralists are accustomed to see in natural sanction an idea of the same order as that of expiation ; nature begins, according to them, that which human con-
NATURAL SANCTION. and God have
science
to continue.
155
Whosoever
violates
l/^
natural laws, therefore, finds himself already punished in a
way,
we may
if
believe them, which forewarns of, and prepunishment resulting from moral laws.
pares, the
In our eyes nothing is more inexact than this conception. Nature punishes no one (in the sense in which classic moral philosophy uses this word), and nature has nobody to punish, for the reason that
One does
respect to nature.
would not
be, in that case,
nobody
is
truly guilty with
not violate a natural law, or
any longer a natural
law.
it
The
pretended violation of a natural law is never anything else but a verification, a visible demonstration. Nature is a great mechanism which always goes on, and which the will of the individual
is
^
unable to impede for a moment. falls between her cog-wheels.
She calmly crushes him who
To
be, or not to
be
—she hardly knows any other punishment
or any other reward.
If
we attempt
gravity while bending too far
we
to violate the law of
over on the tower of
St.
once give the painful verification of this law by falling down with broken bones. If, like a certain personage of a modern novelist, we wish to stop a Jacques,
locomotive at front of
of
it,
human
we
shall at
its
highest speed by holding an iron spear in
shall prove, at our
own
expense, the inferiority
force to that of steam.
In the same way, the indigestion of a glutton and the drunkenness of a tippler have by nature' no kind of moral \/ and penal character whatever ; they simply allow the patient to calculate the force of resistance which his stomach or his brain can offer to the hurtful influence of a certain mass of food or a certain quantity of alcohol. It is still a mathematical equation, this time a more complicated one, which serves as verification for the general theorems of hygiene
and of physiology.
Besides, this force of the resistance of
the digestion or the brain varies a great deal according to individuals.
Our
drinker will learn that he
is
not able to
drink like Socrates, and our glutton that he has not the
MORALITY INDEPENDENT OF OBLIGATION OR SANCTION.
156
Emperor Maximin.
digestion of the
natural consequences of an act are
Let us note that the never linked to the
you throw yourself into it be from self-sacrifice or merely from despair, you will be drowned If you have a good digestion and no disequally quickly. position to gout, you will be able to eat to excess almost with impunity ; on the contrary, if you are dyspeptic, you will be condemned to incessantly undergo the torment of comparative starvation. Another example you have given which dictated the act
intention
the water without knowing
how
;
if
to swim, whether
:
of intemperance, you are awaiting with anxiety the " sanction of nature ; some drops of a medical mixture " will turn it off by changing the terms of the equation put
way
to
a
fit
before your organism to solve.
The
justice of things, there-
same time absolutely inflexible from a mathematical point of view, and absolutely corruptible from the
fore, is at the
moral point of view.
To
A
better express
immoral
—
are necessary
the less
you
or, if ;
a-moral
— precisely
because they
they are the less holy and sacred, they have
veritable
Man
inviolable.
the laws of nature, as such, are
it,
like,
sanction, as
sees in
they are really the more
them only a movable
fetter
which
he tries to remove. All these bold acts against nature are but happy or unhappy experiments, and the result of these experiments has a scientific, but by no means a moral, value.
The attempt
nevertheless, been made to maintain by establishing a kind of secret harmony by aesthetics, between the course of nature and has,
natural sanction
made
visible
that of the moral will.
Morality necessarily imparts to those a superiority even in the order of nature. " Experience, it has been said, shows such a dependency between the morally and the physically good, between the
who
possess
beautiful
it
and the ugly expressed
materially,
and between
the beautiful and the ugly in the sphere of passions and ideas ; one sees the organs become so distinctly modified
;
NATURAL SANCTION.
157
and modelled according to their habitual functions, that there is little doubt that prolonged human life (if it could only be sufficiently prolonged) would show us, in the long run, on the one side monsters, on the other true human beings and this, according to the more and more instinctive abandonment of certain people to every vice, and the acquired domination of certain others, or according to their turned to right purposes."* of
First
all
let
between nature
it
and
be noted that morality,
to
strenuous efforts have been made, the species than for individual
is
life,
this
law of harmony
which such
establish
more
certainly
even
faculties
if
valid for
that were pro-
A succession
of generations and of specific modifiwanted for a moral quality to express itself by a physical quality, and a defect by some deformity. Moreover, the believers in sesthetic sanction seem to entirely confound immorality with what may be called animalism longed. cations
is
that
to say, the absolute
— ^
is
abandonment
to the
coarser
absence of any elevated idea, of any subtle Immorality is not necessarily like this ; it may cpincide with refinement of mind, and it does not always lower the intelligence. Now, what is expressed by means of instincts, the
reasoning.
the body
is
rather
more the lowering of the
A
intelligence than
Don Juan do not necessarily cease to be types of physical beauty, nor would they even if their existence were prolonged. The instincts of cunning, anger, and revenge which we find among the Italians of the South have, in nowise changed the degradation of the
will.
the rare beauty of their race.
Cleopatra and a
Besides,
many
of the types
of conduct which to us, in our advanced social
No
vices are virtues in the state of nature.
no marked
ugliness,
alteration
therefore be the consequence of qualities,
and sometimes the *
of the it.
On
state,
human
seem
shocking
really
type,
can
the contrary, the
virtues, of civilization, if carried
M. Renouvier, "Science de
la
Morale,"
i.
289.
^
;
MORALITY INDEPENDENT OF OBLIGATION OR SANCTION.
158
to excess,
may
easily
become physical
monstrosities.
It is
on how frail a basis is built the attempt to deduce moral and religious sanction from natural sanction.* clear
II.
MORAL SANCTION AND DISTRIBUTIVE JUSTICE. Bentham, Mill, MM. Maudsley, Fouillee, and Lombroso have already grappled with the idea of moral punishment they wanted to take away from pain all character of expiation, and have reduced it to a simple means of social repres-
To
sion and compensation. have,
in
general,
relied
doctrines, which are in the
name
thought
this,
still
reach
this
conclusion
they
on determinist and materialistic under discussion. M. Janet, also,
of classical spiritualism, has, notwithstanding it
all
to be his duty to maintain, in his last work,
the principle of redemptory atonement of freely-committed " Punishment," he says, " must not only be a threat, crimes.
which assures the execution of the law, but a reparation, or an expiation, which serves as a corrective to the violation of the law. The order, upset by a rebelHous will, is reestablished by the suffering which is the consequence of the fault
*
committed."!
M. Renouvier,
for instance
:
"It
is
permissible to see in future
reward a natural prolongation of the series of phenomena which, from this very moment, make the fundamental conditions, and even the physical conditions of happiness, depend on morality" ("Science de la Morale," p. 290). '
t M. Janet, "Traite de Philosophic" (p. 707): "The first law of order, V. Cousin has said, is to be faithful to virtue if one fails in this, the second law of order is to expiate one's fault by punishment In the intelligence the idea of pain corresponds to that of injustice." Two of ;
the philosophers
who have
France most strongly protested against be laws of expiation instead of laws of defence, MM. Franck and Renouvier, seem nevertheless to admit as evident the principle of remuneration as attached to the moral law. in
the doctrine that social laws should
MORAL SANCTION AND DISTRIBUTIVE
JUSTICE.
159
has been said that "
it is, above all, the metal needs sanction " (M. Marion, " Lemons de Morale," p. 157). "It is a severe and sacred law only on the condition of punishment being attached to its violation,
Again,
it
law which
and happiness attached
We all,
to the care taken to observe
believe that this doctrine of tangible reward
that of atonement,
is
untenable
it."
—above
— from whatever point of
view it is regarded, even from the point of view of supposing " a moral law " to exist imperatively addressing itself to beings gifted with freedom. It is a materialist doctrine wrongly opposed to the so-called
materialism of
opponents.
its
Let
from all prejudice, from all preconceived ideas,
us, free
and
what moral reason there might be that a being morally bad should receive sensible suffering, and a righteous try
find
being receive a surplus of enjoyment. there
is
no reason, and
We
shall see
that
that, instead of finding ourselves face
we are placed and physical deduction derived
to face with a proposition evident a priori,
before a grossly empirical
from the principle of
well- understood retaliation or interest. This deduction goes under the disguise of three so-called rational notions -(i) that of m^rit ; (2) that of order , (3)
—
that of distributive justice.
\\. In the
classical theory of merit, " I
esteem," which at
first
have forfeited the
simply expressed the intrinsic value " I
have
deserved a punishment," and thenceforth expresses a
state-
of
the
will,
acquires
the
following meaning,
.
ment made by the inner nature " The question
is
not," says
to the world outside.
M. Franck, "
to be punished, for this proposition
is
to
know
evident va
if
the
itself "
wrong
This
deserves
("Philosophie
du Droit Penal," p. 79). " It would be against the nature of things," M. Renouvier, " to demand of virtiie not to expect any M. Caro goes remuneration" ("Science de la Morale," p. 286). further, and, in two chapters of " Problemes de Morale Sociale," he tries hard, while relying on M. de Broglie, to maintain both the moral and the social right of punishing the guilty ones.
says also
;
MORALITY INDEPENDENT OF OBLIGATION OR SANCTION.
l6o
sudden passing from the moral to the visible, from the depth of our being to the outside, seems to us unjustifiable. It is still more so in the hypothesis of freewill than in the others.
man
of
defined. itself
According to that hypothesis, the different faculties not truly linked together and mutually
are, in fact,
The
will is
not the pure product of the intelligence,
sprung from the
Sensibility
sensibility.
longer the true centre of our being, and to
how
understand
it
can be responsible
the will has freely wanted the
fault
it
to
has
no
difficult
If
for the will.
commit the
of the sensibility, which
then,
is,
becomes evil,
it
is
not
only played the
and not of cause. Join the tangible evil of the punishment to the moral evil of the fault, under pretext of expiation, and you will have doubled the sum of evils without mending anything. You will be Hke the doctor in Moliere who, called in to cure a diseased arm, would have cut oif his patient's other arm. Without the grounds of
part of mover, I
'
which we shall speak later on) the punishment would be as blameworthy as the crime, and the prison would be no better than those who live in it. Let us say further that the lawgivfers and the judges, by deliberately condemning the guilty to punishment, would become their
social defence (of
fellows.
Theoretically speaking
—what
—
that
is,
putting aside the social
between the murder committed by the murderer and the murder committed by the executioner ? The last-named crime has not even, as an extenuating circumstance, some reason or other utility
difference will there be
the legal murder becomes more wholly absurd than the illegal murder. The executioner imitates the murderer other murderers will imitate him submitting, in their turn, to that kind of fascination which murder exercises, and which practically makes the scaffold of personal interest or revenge
;
;
1
It is impossible to see in the " sanction of expiation " anything resembling a rational consequence of
a school of crime. the
fault.
It is
simply a mechanical sequence,
or, better,
a
MORAL SANCTION AND DISTRIBUTIVE material repetition,
and
imitation, the
model
l6l
JUSTICE. for
which
is
the
fault itself. 2. Shall we, with V. Cousin and M. Janet, invoke this strange principle of order which a " rebellious will " disturbs,
Here the distincsuffering can re-establish ? between the social and the moral question is forgotten. Social order has been really the historical origin of punishment, and. pain was at first, as Littr6 has shown, but a compensation a material indemnity demanded by the victim
and which only tion
—
—
or by his relatives; but
when we
place ourselves at the
compensate anything ? would be too convenient if a crime could be physically redeemed by punishment, and if it were possible to pay the penalty for a bad act by a certain amount of physical suffering, as the indulgences of the Church may be bought for chinking crowns. No ; that which is done remains
social point of view,
can pain
really
It
The moral
done.
physical evil which
is
notwithstanding
evil persists,
added
to
It
it.
all
the
would be as rational
to attempt, with the Determinists, the cure of the criminal as
it is
irrational to look for
This idea
punishment or compensation of
the result of a kind of childish mathematics and infantile judgment. " An eye for an eye,
his crime.
is
a tooth for a tooth."* *
M.
Renouvier, one of the principal representatives in France of
the moral philosophy of duty, after having himself severely criticised the vulgar idea of punishment, has yet principle of retaliation itself,
and
by interpreting
it
made in
great efforts to save the
a better
sense.
" Taken by
as an expression of a sentiment of the soul with regard to
crime, retaliation would be far from deserving the disgust or the indig-
whose penal theories are ("Science de la Morale," vol. ii., p. 296). According to M. Renouvier, it would not be undesirable that the guilty should undergo the effect of this maxim if turned into a general rule that which is impracticable is the mathematical equivalence which retaliation supposes between the suffering and the wrong done. But, will be our reply, if this equivalence were realizable, the retaliation would not, therefore, _be more just; for we cannot, whatever M. Renouvier may say, convert into a general law the nation with which the publicists regard often worse founded
upon the
it,
basis of strict justice"
;
M
;
MORALITY INDEPENDENT OF OBLIGATION OR SANCTION.
l62
For him who admits the hypothesis of free-will, one of the is in the moral world, the other in the In visible world ; the one in heaven, the other on earth. scales of the balance
the
first is
will, in the second a wholly limited sensiequiUbrium to be established between them ? it is someexists, is quite intangible to us
a free
How
bility.
Free-will, if
is
it
thing absolute,
;
and we have no hold on the
resolutions are, piable.
and, in
absolute.
Its
therefore, in themselves irreparable, inex-
They have been compared with flashes of lightning they dazzle us for a moment, and disappear.
fact,
The good
or evil act mysteriously descends from the will
into the sphere of the senses sible to re-ascend
as to get hold of
from it
this
;
but, after that,
it
sphere into that of
and punish
The
it.
descends, but does not re-ascend.
is
imposso
free-will,
flash of lightning
Between
free-will
and
the objects of the visible world there does not exist any other rational link than the will itself of the agent.
maxim and tion
;
the immoral intention of
neither can
we
Therefore
him who has provoked the
convert into a general law the
—
maxim
it
retalia-
of revenge,
which gives back the blows received we can only generalize the physical evil and the painfiil effect. But the generalization of an evil is morally an evil in itself ; therefore only personal or social reasons of defence remain reasons of precaution, of utility. According to M. Renouvier, retaliation, once purified, may be expressed in this formula, which he " Whosoever has violated the freedom of declares to be acceptable others has deserved to suffer in his own. " But this very formula is, in our opinion, not admissible from the point of view taken by Kant and his followers with regard to intention. The guilty one must neither be made to suffer, nor be restricted in his liberty, in so far as he has in the past violated the freedom of otherS, but in so far as he is capable of violating it again. It cannot, therefore, be said that no act of the past whatever deserves suffering, and pain is never justified but by the antici'
—
;
pation of similar acts in the future. to simple possibilities,
which
it
It
tries to
does not cling to modify.
realities,
but
If the guilty person
went by his own free will into exile to a desert island, from which return would be impossible, human society (and, in general, every society of moral beings) would find itself disarmed no moral law would then possibly demand that, having violated the freedom of others, he should suffer in his own. ;
MORAL SANCTION AND DISTRIBUTIVE is
necessary, so as to
make punishment
should desire punishment
JUSTICE.
1
63
possible, that free-
and it can only desire it when an already sufficiently deep improvement has taken place, which, in its turn, renders the punishment partly will itself
;
undeserved.
Such
the antinomy in which the doctrine of expia-
is
tion ends
undertakes, not only to simply correct, but
if it
As long
to punish.
as a criminal remains really criminal,
him below any moral sanction. He be converted before being struck and, if he is converted, what reason is there for striking ? Guilty or not, the will endowed with freedom would at this point go so far beyond the visible world that the only way of behaving in regard to it would be to bow down to it. A will of this kind is an irresponsible Caesar, whom it is well enough to this very fact places
ought
to
;
condemn and passion,
but
to execute in effigy, so as to satisfy popular
who
really
During the " Terreur default of
every
him whom they symbolized.
their hypothesis of
do nought
escapes
else
;
external action.
blancfie " live eagles
an expiation to be
were burned in
Human inflicted
their cruelty is as vain
and
judges, in
on
free-will,
as irrational.
While the innocent body of the accused struggles in their will, which is the real eagle, the supreme eagle free in flight, soars out of their reach high above them. 3. If one tries to investigate this naive or cruel principle of order brought forward by the spiritualists, which reminds us a little too much of the order reigning at Warsaw, it becomes transformed into that of a pretended distri"To everyone accordiiTg to his works" butive \\i.%'a!Z&. hands, his
—such
is the social ideal of St. Simon ; such is also the moral ideal according to M. Janet (''La Morale" p. 577). Sanction in this case is merely a question of the general proportion fixed between all labour and its remuneration (i) he who does a great deal must receive a great deal; (2) he who does but little must receive little (3) he who commits evil must receive evil. Let it first be noted that :
;
:
164
MORALITY INDEPENDENT OF OBLIGATION OR SANCTION.
can in no way be deduced from the two preceding ones. If a smaller benefit seems to call for smaller recompense, it does not follow that an offence should call for revenge. Besides, the two other principles seem to us to be open to controversy at least in so far as they pretend to be formulas of the moral ideal. Here, again, the two points of views the one moral, the other social are confounded with one another. The principle, "To each one according to his works," is a purely economic principle. It sums up well enough the ideal of equal exchange and of social contracts, but not at all that of an absolute justice which should give to everyone according to his moral intention. It means only this independently of intention, the objects exchanged in society ought to be of the same value, and an individual who produces a thing of considerable value must not receive in exchange an insignificant recompense. This is the rule of exchange ; it is that of all self-interested labour ; it is not the rule of disinterested effort, which virtue should hypothetically demand. There is, and must be, in social
/this last principle
—
—
—
relations a certain tariff of the actions, not of the intentions.
We
all watch that this tariff may be duly observed ; that a merchant who gives sham goods, or a citizen who does
fulfil his civic duty, may not receive in exchange the normal quantity of money or of reputation. Nothing can be better ; but what tariff can be put on virtue, which should be truly " moral "? Where economic contracts and material exchanges are no longer under consideration, but the will
not
^
itself, this
as
it is
law loses
plausible,
is
all its
worth.
Distributive justice, so far
therefere a purely social, purely utilitarian
which has no longer any sense outside some sort of Society rests entirely on the principle of reciprocity that is to say, if one produces that which is good and useful, one expects good in exchange ; and if one produces what is harmful, one expects something harmful. From this entirely mechanical reciprocity, which we find in the social
rule,
society.
—
MORAL SANCTION AND DISTRIBUTIVE body, as in
all
between the
JUSTICE.
1
65
other organisms, results a rough proportion
visible welfare of
one individual and the
visible
welfare of the others, a mutual solidarity which takes the form
of a sort of distributive justice.
But, once more, this
is
a
natural equilibrium, rather than a moral equity of distribution.
The unrewarded
righteous act, which
is,
so to speak, not
valued at its right worth, the evil which is not punished, simply shocks us as an anti-social occurrence, as an economic
and
a relation between individuals from a moral point of view, this is
political monstrosity, as
which
harmful
is
no longer
so.
—
works
"
ment
for the
;
but,
The
principle
—"
j
;
to everyone according to his
an excellent form of social encourageworker or the moral agent. It imposes on him, as his ideal, a kind of " piece-work,'' which is always much more productive than " day-work," and, above all, more productive than work for " a sum down." It is preeminently a practical rule, not a sanction. The essential characteristic of a true moral sanction should really be never is,
in fact,
become a
to
end or aim
fixed
in itself.
The
child
who
says his lessons correctly merely for the sake of afterwards
some sweets, no longer deserves these sweets from moral point of view, exactly because he has made them his aim. The sanction must, therefore, be found receiving
the
entirely outside the regions oi finality,
reason outside the regions of the
so far as
will, in
it
is
utility.
and with Its
claim
still
is
more
to reach
a cause, without wishing to direct
Nor can any contrivance alter the practical principle of social justice, " Expect to receive
it
with reference to an aim.
from men
in proportion to
this metaphysical principle
what you :
will give to
them," into
" If the mysterious cause acting
is good in itself and by itself, a pleasant effect If it is bad, your be produced on your sensibility.
within you will
sensibility will
The
first
because
it
be made to suffer." proportion in exchange
formula
—
formed a
cerned the future.
—was
practical motive for the will,
The
rational,
and con-
second, which does not contain
'
1
MORALITY INDEPENDENT OF OBLIGATION OR SANCTION.
66
any motive bears on the
for action,
and which, by a
justice
is
prac-
The
idea of distributive therefore, only valuable in so far as it expresses
barren and morally empty.
tically
retro-active effect,
modifying the future,
past, instead of
is,
an entirely social ideal, the economic laws of which themIt becomes an selves tend to bring about its reaUzation. immoral idea if, by giving it an absolute and metaphysical character, one wants to turn it into a principle of punishment or reward.
There certainly is nothing more rational than that the moral judgment of every being should be in favour of virtue and be opposed to crime but this judgment cannot pass the limits of the moral world to be transformed into the least kind ;
of coercive and penal action. This affirmation good, you are bad " ought never to become this
—
be made to enjoy or to
suffer."
The
— " You are
"You must
:
allowed the privilege of forcing the righteous
man
to
Both vice and virtue are therefore, responsible only to
harm.
themselves, and, in
many
others. After
and virtue are but forms of the
all,
vice
cases, only to the conscience of
under these forms the will itself continues to nature it seems to be to aspire to happiness. see
be do him
guilty should not
why
this
eternal desire
The human
satisfaction.
absolute, treated
beings.
It
fatal or free
with
should not, in wild beasts
indulgence and
all
must pity,
and whose do not
will,
exist,
We
of us, find be, like
the
in
other
matters ;
little if their ferocity be considered as they are morally always to be pitied. Why
should one want them to become physically
pitiful also ?
A
was once shown a large coloured picture representing martyrs. In the arena lions and tigers were feasting on ChrisOn one side another tiger was left locked up in tian blood. its cage, and looked on with a woeful air. The child was " Dont you pity these unhappy martyrs ?" asked She answered " And what about the poor tiger which has no Christian to eat !" A sage, free from all prejudice, would surely have pitied the martyrs; but this would not have
little girl
:
:
MORAL SANCTION AND DISTRIBUTIVE
167
JUSTICE.
prevented him likewise pitying the starving
tiger.
We
re-
member the Hindoo legend which tells us how Buddha gave his own body to a wild animal dying of hunger. This is some Such conduct, absurd from the practical standpoint, is the only legitimate one from the
the supreme pity, the only one which does not conceal
hidden
and
injustice.
social
standpoint of pure morality.
For the narrow and entirely human justice which refuses kindness to him who is already unhappy enough to be must be substituted another larger justice, which a justice which not only ignores the hand with which it gives, but will not even know the hand which receives it. This kind of claim to a happiness which is reserved for the good man only, and to which should correspond a veritable guilty
—
gives kindness to all
unhappiness among
right to relic
(in
all
inferior individuals, is the
the etymological sense of
the word) of ancient
Reason may please itself by supposing a certain relation between sensibility and happiness ; for every sentient being, by its very nature and definition, desires enjoyment and hates pain. Reason may also suppose a relation between all will and happiness, for every being aristocratic prejudices.
susceptible of will spontaneously aspires to feel itself happy.
The
differences in will
show themselves only when there
is
a question of choosing the ways and means of arriving at happiness. Some people believe their happiness to be incompatible with that of others, some try to find their happiness in that of others
this it is
;
which distinguishes
good men from bad men.
To
this difference in
would
correspond,
essential
difference
direction of such or such a will
according in
its
independent cause which be so
;
to
orthodox morality, an
very nature, in the deep and it
manifests outwardly.
It
may
but this difference cannot do away with the per-
Even rrianent relation between the will and happiness. now, under our present laws, criminals retain a certain
— 1
68
MORALITY INDEPENDENT OF OBLIGATION OR SANCTION.
number of
rights;
absolute (for
way
that a
they maintain
him who admits an
man
cannot
sell
these rights in the
all
absolute).
himself as a
In the same he cannot
slave, so
take away from himself this kind of natural
title
to ultimate
happiness which every sentient being believes himself to possess. So long as beings, evil by deliberate choice or forced to
it
by necessity, will persevere in wishing for hapno reason which can be urged for withholding
piness, I see it
from them. There is, you
will say, this
that they are bad.
Is
it,
reason
—
sufficient in itself
then, only to
make them
better
you have recourse to pain ? No that is for you but a secondary aim, which might be attained by other means. Your principal aim is to produce expiation in them that is
that
;
—
and without object. As Our moralists be wicked
to say, unhappiness, without utility
were not enough for them to have not yet got beyond the arbitrary distribution which the Gospel seems to admit "To him that hath shall be given to him that hath not shall be taken away even that which he hath." The Christian idea of grace would, however, be acceptable on one condition that of its being universal,
if it
!
:
;
—
In this way it would become, instead of a grace, a kind of divine debt. That which is deeply shocking in all morality that is more or of less borrowed from Christianity, is the idea of election choice, of favour, of a distribution of grace. A god ought not to choose between beings, to see which he will in the end make happy. Even a human legislator, if he pretended to give an absolute and truly divine worth to his laws, would be forced to renounce everything which would indicate any
given to
all
men and
all
beings.
—
" election " or " preference," any pretended distribution and
Every /a/-/«a/ gift is necessarily also biassed, and on earth nor in heaven ought there to be such a
sanction.
neither
thing zs favour.
PENAL OR DEFENSIVE JUSTICE IN SOCIETY.
CHAPTER
II.
The Principle of Penal or Defensive Justice
Our
169
in Society.
present society can surely not realize the far distant but it can far less take ;
ideal of universal forbearance
as
its
type of conduct quite the opposite ideal of orthodox
morality
—namely, the
there
is
and unhapAs we have seen,
distribution of happiness
piness, according to merit
and demerit.
no purely moral reason whatever to suppose any and of reward to virtue. We have
distribution of pain to vice
acknowledge with even greater reason
to
pure question of
that,
taken as a
no social sanction, and that name are mere phenomena of social
right, there is
the facts called by this
defence.*
Now, we have
to
standpoint at which
come down from the purely theoretical we have hitherto placed ourselves, to
the more confused sphere of sentiments and the association
may be
of ideas, where our opponents
advantage of
us.
The
agree with the ideas
able to again take
mankind does not at all of the Hindus, and of every true philomajority of
sopher, about absolute justice being identical with universal charity.
for
It
has strong prejudices against the starving tiger
which Buddha
sacrificed
himself;
it
has natural pre-
does not seem satisfactory to them that the wrong action should not be punished, and ferences with regard to sheep.
virtue
be quite gratuitous.
who do
It
Mankind
is
like those children
not like stories in which the good
little
boys are
* Doubtless the old. objection will be made "If punishments were, on the part of society, only a means of defence, they would be blows, no'!, punishments" (M. Janet, " Cours de Philosophie," p. 30). On the contrary, when punishments do not find their justification in :
defence,
it
is
precisely these punishments
by whatever euphemism they may be of social defence,
which are the
real blows,
Outside the reasons, for instance, the act of administering a hundred called.
strokes of a stick on the soles of the feet as punishment to a thief will
never be transformed into a moral
act.
MORALITY INDEPENDENT OF OBLIGATION OR SANCTION.
170
eaten up by wolves, and who, on the contrary, would like to Even on the stage the hear that the wolves were eaten up.
demand
general
punished
;
and
is
that
should be rewarded, vice
virtue
this is not the case the spectators
if
go away
discontented, with a feeling of disappointed expectation. Why this tenacious sentiment, this persistent need of sanction,
—
the sociable being this psychological impossibility of being reconciled to the idea of unpunished evil ?
in
In the practical
place,
first
and
action from
it
is
active being,
he
all
sees,
and
because man is an essentially tends to deduce a rule of
who for
whom
the
of others is
life
a perpetual moral lesson given in examples. With that wonderful social instinct which man possesses, he feels directly that an unpunished crime is an element of social
he
destruction;
himself and
all
feels
a presentiment of danger, both to
others, such as a citizen feels in a besieged
town when he discovers an open breach. In the second place, this bad example personal exhortation to
evil,
is
like a
whispered in his
kind of
ear, against
This is due to the popular which always believes sanction to enter into the \&cy formula of the law, and regards reward and punishment as motive forces. Human law has the double character of being utilitarian and obligatory, which is exactly the opposite of a moral law commanding a free-will without a motive power. There is a third and still more profound reason for the indignation with which impunity is met. Human intelligence
which
his highest instincts revolt.
common
finds
it
sense,
difficult
volted by
it
to
a
to stop at the idea of far
higher degree than
is
moral
evil
;
it
is
re-
possible by a want of
material symmetry or mathematical exactitude. Man, being essentially a sociable animal, " Zwov ttoXitikov" cannot resign
himself to the definite success of anti-social actions, when such
humanly speaking, to be successful. The very mind urges him to turn to the superhuman, demand reparation and compensation. If bees, suddenly
actions seem,
nature of man's to
1
PENAL OR DEFENSIVE JUSTICE IN SOCIETY.
1 7
chained, were to see the order of their cells destroyed before their very eyes, without
them
any hope of ever being able to set would be extreme, and
right again, their consternation
they would instinctively expect some intervention or other to them as immutable would be to a higher The very soul of man is penetrated by the
to re-establish that order, which
and sacred as intelligence.
of the
that
We
idea of sociability.
is
stars
think, so to speak, within the limit
of society, as within that of time and space.
Man, by
moral nature (such as is transmitted to him thus induced to believe that the last word in the universe cannot remain with the wicked. He is always indignant at the triumph of evil and of injustice. This indignation manifests itself in children even before they can properly talk, and numerous traces may be found of it even among animals. The logical result of this protest
by
his
heredity),
against evil acter of
is
is
the refusal to believe in the definitive char-
Completely dominated by the ideal
triumph.
its
oi progress,
it
cannot allow any being to remain for any length
of time arrested in
its
we have
onward
course.
the work of those which are inseparable from social and moral reasons. An immoral being possesses an ugliness which is much more repulsive than physical ugliness, and on which our eye does not care to dwell. We, therefore, want Finally,
also
to
estimate
aesthetic considerations
to correct, to remove, to improve, or to suppress recall the precarious position of the leper
it.
Let us
and the unclean
They were treated as we in these days and dramatic authors do not crime too evidently unpunished, neither do
in ancient society. treat
criminals.
generally leave
they as a
rule,
Novelists
be
personages, above
it
here noted, represent their principal
all their
heroines, as entirely ugly (with
hump-backed, or one-eyed, etc.). If they sometimes do so, as Victor Hugo in his Quasimodo, their aim in
goitre,
that case
is
to
make
rest of the work, or to
us forget the deformity during
make
use of
it
as
an
antithesis.
all
the
Most
172
MORALITY INDEPENDENT OF OBLIGATION OR SANCTION.
ends with a transformation of the hero or Jane Eyre). Ugliness, therefore, produces with certainty, although in a less degree,
often, the novel
the heroine (as in Petite Fadette or the same effect as immorality, correct the one as the other
immorality from outside
The
?
and we but
;
how
the need to
feel
we
are
to correct
idea of pain inflicted as a
Punishment
re-agent at once presents itself to the mind.
one of those old popular remedies, like the boiling oil into which, before the time of Ambroise Pard, the limbs of the wounded were plunged. Really the desire to see the gsiJisJ It is chiefly guilty one punished comes from good nature. explained by the impossibility for man to remain inactive, He wants to indifferent in the presence of any kind of evil. is
try it
and do something,
wound,
to touch the
or to apply a revulsive
;
and
either to heal
his intelligence is enticed
by the apparent symmetry offered by the proportionality of moral and physical evil. He does not know that there are The certain things which it is better not to touch at all. first people who made excavations in Italy, and who found statues of Venus with an arm or a leg wanting, felt the same indignation which we still feel in these days in presence of a badly-balanced will. They wanted to mend the evil, to put back an arm borrowed from elsewhere, to put on another leg. Now, more resigned and more timid, we leave the masterpieces as
we
find them, superbly mutilated.
very admiration for the great works of art
not without some pain
commit an brought
face
irreparable,
;
but we prefer to
act of profanation.
we
to
face
feel far
with
This evil,
more deeply
is,
suffer, rather
suffering,
this still
Our.
in that case,
than
when we
are
sentiment of the in the presence of
moral evil. The inward will can be efficaciously corrected only by its own self, just as it is only the long-departed creators of the marble statues who can mend these smooth, white, broken limbs. We are thus reduced to that which is hardest for man to await the future. Real
—
progress can only spring
from the
inner nature
of
the
:
PENAL OR DEFENSIVE JUSTICE IN SOCIETV. individual. direct
The
1
73
we can use are all inAs to the will itself, it those who consider it free,
only means which
— education,
instance.
for
ought to be sacred precisely to or at least spontaneous ; they cannot, without contradiction and injustice, attempt to lay hold of it. Thus the feeling which urges us to desire a sanction is partly immoral. Like many other sentiments, it has a very legitimate principle and wrong applications. Between human
and the
instinct
We
to analyse
still
and
scientific truth.
being living in society.
we
that this oppo-
will, in
that instinct
that psychological want of sanction which
want, and
exists, therefore,
show
are going to
the end, be With this object we will try more deeply than we have hitherto done
sition is provisional,
conformable to
theory of morality
scientific
a certain opposition.
shall see
We how it
is
we
find in the
sketch the genesis of this
will
produced, in the
first
place,
by a natural and legitimate instinct, and then tends to restrict and limit itself more and more as the course of human evolution continues. If there is
Every
any general law of
animal (we might
life,,
it
extend the
is
law
the following
even
to the
kingdom) answers to an attack by a defence, which is itself most often an attack in answer, a kind of shock in return. This is a primitive instinct, which has source in the reflex movement, in the irritability of its living tissues, and without which life would be impossible. Do not even animals, deprived of their brain, still try to Those beings in which this bite him who pinches them ? instinct was keenest and most developed have more easily vegetable
survived, like the rose-trees provided with thorns.
the superior animals such as
but continues to
unbend
against
which throw
exist.
darts.
many
others,
Among
this instinct is modified,
In us there
him who touches
is it,
a spring ready to as in those plants
This was originally a mechanical,
unconscious phenomenon so
man
;
but this instinct does not, like
weaken when
it
becomes conscious.
(See
a
MORALITY INDEPENDENT OF OBLIGATION OR SANCTION.
174
on
this point
sec.
It
iii.).
"La Morale
is,
Anglaise Contemporaine," part
In every primitive society one must be able, in order to
when
to bite
ii.,
in fact, necessary for the life of the individual.
bitten, to strike
when
And
struck.
live,
to-day a
when he has received a blow, even which he cannot return ; he has a 'feeling of inferiority. On the contrary, when he has returned the child in
discontented
is
play,
blow, with even additional energy, he
no longer
is satisfied.
He
feels
no longer unequal to the struggle for life. We find the same feeling among animals. When we play with a dog, we must from time to time let him take our hand in his mouth, if we do not want him to take it in anger. In the games of grown-up men we also find the same need of a certain equalization of chances, the players always desiring, according to the popular expression, to find themselves even. Undoubtedly, 'with man new sentiments interself-love, vene, and are added to the primitive instinct vanity, care about the good opinion of others. It does not much matter what is underneath all this ; something deeper may be perceived the sentiment of the necessities of life. inferior,
—
—
who
In uncivilized society a being
is
returning the evil done to him, and of even is
not capable of
more than
that,
a being badly equipped for existence, meant to disappear
sooner or
later.
Life itself
is,
—
in its essence,
a revenge
—
permanent revenge for the obstacles which fetter it. Revenge is, moreover, a physiological necessity for all living beings, so deeply rooted in
remains
moment
them
that the brutal instinct
There is a wellwho, mortally wounded, seeing an Austrian chief pass near him, found strength to catch hold
known
until
the
of
death.
story of a Swiss
of a piece of rock, and to knock his brains out, killing himself
by
this last effort.
A
great
many more
kind could be related, in which revenge
facts
of this
no longer justified by personal defence, and, so to speak, extends beyond the question of Hfe, by one of those numerous and sometimes fruitful contradictions which produce in the social being is
PENAL OR DEFENSIVE JUSTICE IN SOCIETY.
175
wrongful sentiments, like avarice, or useful sentiments, like the love of glory.
Let
be noted that the moral notion of justice or of unknown throughout this whole mechanism. If an animal without its brain bites him who hurts it, there is here no idea of sanction. If you ask a child or an unculmerit
it
is still
man why he
tured
someone, he
strikes
himself
will think
when he tells you that he himself was first Ask him no more. Really, for him who only
fully justified
struck.
considers the general laws of
We
this is a sufficient reason.
life,
are here at the very origin,
of physical emergence, of
this
and almost
at the point
pretended moral need of
sanction, which so far does not offer us anything moral, but
which
will
soon modify
itself.
Let us suppose a
instead of being himself the object of an attack,
the onlooker.
back will
He
he cannot
;
sees
fail
to
the aggressor
his
thought he
who defends
and, as the English school has demonstrated, he
Every blow given
pathize with him. therefore, seem a a sanction.* *
just
simply
is
vigorously driven
applaud, for in
put himself in the place of the one
man who,
himself,
sym-
will
to the aggressor will,
compensation, a legitimate revenge,
Why does
he put himself in the place of him who defends himself, ? For several reasons, which yet do not imply that sentiment of justice which has to be explained (i) Because the attacked and abused man is always in an unfortunate If we are present at a position, more fit to excite interest and pity. struggle, do we not always take the side of the weakest, even without
and not
in the place of the other
:
knowing
if it
aggressor
is
ciation allows
sympathize
is
he who
is
in the right ?
anti-social, contrary to the
all
;
and, as
we always
(2)
The
situation
mutual security which
are part of
some
society or other,
the more with the one of the two adversaries
—the
own which a man
who
is
we in
But let us suppose that the society of is a part may not be the great human association, and happens to be, for instance, an association of the most similar situation to our
most
of the
all asso-
social.
In that case rather strange facts will arise in his conscience. approve of a thief defending himself against another thief, and punishing him ; but he will not approve of a policeman defending himthieves.
He
will
176
MORALITY INDEPENDENT OF OBLIGATION OR SANCTION.
Stuart Mill
is,
therefore, right in thinking that the desire
on the individual punished comes back mere instinct of personal defence only he has too decidedly confounded defence with revenge, and he has not shown that this very instinct is reduced to a reflex action, to see every attack
to the
;
called forth either directly or sympathetically.
If this reflex
seems to adopt a moral That which character by taking a disinterested character. only a fundamentally therefore penal sanction is we call
action
roused by sympathy,
is
defence exercised
it
by individuals in whose place we can put whose place
ourselves in thought, a defence against others in
we do not want to put ourselves. The physical and social need aspect
— since sanction If reward
reward. it
of
has
at
this is
another because
calls for
and expects another caress
in
every expression of kindness calls forth in others
;
This
a similar expression. life.
of sanction bears a double
one time punishment,
seems as natural as pain,
Every caress
life.
at
origin also in a reflex action, in a primitive instinct
its
response
is
A dog which
comes
is
true all
up the
softly forward,
name of
scale of animal
wagging
He
its
tail,
to
invincible repugnance to put himself in the place of the policeman,
an and
to sympathize with him, for that will falsify his
It is
self against
in this
way
a thief in the
society at large.
moral judgments.
that the people of the lower classes take sides against the
police in every squabble, without even inquiring
foreign lands
Frenchmen would
French,
Conscience
etc.
will feel
is full
very point of contradiction
what is going on ; and in
feel inclined to
take the side of the
of phenomena of this kind, complex to the
—which, however,
under the one law. which we witness as spectators, and in which we take the part of one or other of the opponents. If we are a policeman or quiet citizen, we shall approve of the handcuffs, the prison, if need be of the gallows. If we are a thief or lazzaroni, or, perhaps, simply one of the common people, we shall approve of the pistol-shot fired from behind a bush, of the dagger mysteriously thrust into the back of the carabinieri. The only thing that remains identical in all these moral or immoral judgments is Sanction
is
fall
essentially the conclusion of a struggle
statement of this fact of experience. He who strikes naturally and socially expect to be struck in his turn.
the
must
PENAL OR DEFENSIVE JUSTICE IN SOCIETY.
177
lick his mate is indignant if he finds himself received with a growl, just as a good man is indignant when he receives evil in return for his benefactions.
extend and generalize
and you
entirely personal,
By means
this impression,
of sympathy,
which was
will arrive at this
at first
theory
:
it
is
natural that every being working for the happiness of his
means of
fellow-creatures should receive, in exchange, the
being happy.
we
Considering ourselves mutually responsible,
feel ourselves
bound by a kind of debt with regard
to
every benefactor of society. To the natural determinism which connects benefit with benefit is therefore added a feeling of sympathy, and even of gratitude, towards the benefactor. Now, in virtue of an inevitable illusion, happiness seems to us always to be more deserved by those with whom we are in sympathy.* After this rapid glance at the genesis of the sentiments
aroused in
man by
the punishment of evil or the reward of
goodness, we can understand
and
inflexible justice
how the notion
was formed
—a
good to good and evil to evil. It physical symbol of a deep-rooted physical tions
of a distributive
justice is
which proporbut the meta-
instinct,
which
in
reality is part of the instinct of the preservation of life.t * Will some pessimist, perhaps, deny this natural instinct of gratitude, and object that, on the contrary, man is by nature ungrateful? Nothing is more inaccurate. Man \% forgetful; that is all. Children and animals are still more forgetful. There is a great difference between these two things. The instinct of gratitude exists in all beings, and subsists as long as the remembrance of the benefit remains vivid and intact. But Far stronger instincts, such as this remembrance changes very rapidly.
personal interest, pride, etc. if
we put
,
fight against
ourselves in the place of others,
it.
we
It is for this
reason that,
are so shocked not to see
a good action rewarded ; whereas we often feel as little remorse when we ourselves forget to respond to some kind action. The sentiment of gratitude is one of those natural altruistic sentiments which, finding themselves in opposition to an equally strong selfishness, are stronger the appreciation of somebody else's conduct, and not the ruling
when
of our own,
t This
is
concerned.
instinct,
after
having created the complex system of social
N
1/
"
178 It
MORALITY INDEPENDENT OF OBLIGATION OR SANCTION. remains for us to see how, in the partly
ments of
human
society,
this
artificial
instinct gradually
environ-
becomes
modified in such a way that one day the notion of distributive justice will lose even the practical support which it still
derives from popular sentiment.
Let
us, in
fact,
follow
the
course
together with the evolution of societies.
ment was much
of penal
sanction,
-Qriginally punish-
the defence was in ; you provoke a wild animal, it will tear you to pieces ; if you attack a man of the world, he will answer you humorously; if you offend a philosopher, he will not answer at all. It is the law of economy of force \^'' greater than the fault
excess of the attack.
If
punishments and rewards, has been fortified by the very existence of We have not been long in recognisingthis system of protection. that, if we should injure somebody in any way, we must expect a In this way a natural and rational more or less quick repression. association is established (already pointed out by the English school) We between a certain kind of conduct and a certain punishment. find in the Revue Philosophique a curious instance of a dawning
"
have not," says M. Delboeuf, its meaning. The hero is a small dog, a cross between a wolf-dog and a spaniel. He was at the age when, among his species, the serious duties of social life begin. As he was allowed to choose my study as a favourite resting-place, he often misbehaved himself there. Being a very strict master, I made him feel association of this kind in '
'
an animal.
I
ever seen an account of any fact so significant in
each time the horrors of his behaviour, and carried him quickly into the court-yard and made him sit up in a corner. After making him stop there for a longer or shorter time, according to the
allowed him to come back. understand certain articles
importance of the offence, I This education made him pretty quickly of the code of canine civility little rascal as I believed him to be quite cured of his
—
he was ; so that at last tendency to forget the rules of propriety. Oh deception One day, coming into my study, I found myself fece to face with a fresh I looked for my dog to make him feel instance of his wrongdoing. I called him, but he all the shame of his relapse ; he was not there. I went down to the court-yard there he was, sitting did not appear. in the corner, holding his front paws pitifully over his chest, looking I was disarmed distressed, ashamed, and full of repentance. (Revue Philosophique, April, 1881). See also in Romanes more or !
less similar facts.
;;
PENAL OR DEFENSIVE JUSTICE IN SOCIETY.
I
79
^V
which produces
growing softening of penal sanction. The animal is a coarsely-regulated spring, the expansion of which is not always proportional to the force which releases
same with primitive man, and with the penal To defend one's self against an was necessary to crush him. Later on it was
the
It is
it.
this
law of primitive peoples. aggressor,
it
seen to be unnecessary to strike so heavily.
made is
An
attempt
to exactly balance the reflex action with the attack
stage
this
which
summed up
is
expresses an ideal
still
infinitely too
"
—a
it
"An
in the precept,
eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth
is
;
precept which
high for primitive
men
an ideal which we ourselves to-day are far from realizing completely, although from other points of view we go beyond it. An eye for an eye, that is the physical law of equality between action and reaction, which must rule a perfectly b balanced and steadily working organism. Only as time goes on does man become aware that it does not conduce even to his personal preservation to exactly proportion the pain inflicted to the suffering received. He, therefore, tends,
and
will
always tend in future, to diminish the suffering.
He
economize the punishments, the prisons, the sanctions of all kinds. These are perfectly useless expenditures of social force, as soon as they go beyond the only aim which will
scientifically justifies
them
— defence of the
of the attacked social body.
more recognised innocent (2) to
the
:
spirit
that there are
(i) to strike
strike
It is in these
him who
is
individual
and
days more and
two ways of striking the innocent in every respect
the guilty too hard.
Even
of revenge (so idle a use of
rancour, hatred,
human
faculties
!),
tend to disappear, so as to give place to the statement of fact its
and the research
for
more
rational
means of preventing
renewal.
What
is
hatred
?
A
mere form of the
instinct of physical
preservation, the sentiment of a danger ever present in the
person of another individual. If a dog thinks of some child who has thrown a stone at him, a succession of natural
)
l8o
MORALITY INDEPENDENT OF OBLIGATION OR SANCTION.
images
him immediately
for
associates the action of the
throwing of the stone with the thought of the child
;
causes the dog to be angry, and to grind his teeth. has, therefore,
had
its utility,
a state of society which
and but
is
is
which Hatred
rationally justifiable in
little
advanced.
It
was a
valuable stimulant to the nervous system, and, through
it,
to
In the superior social state, in which the individual no longer needs to defend himself, hatred has the muscular system.
no longer any sense. If one is robbed, one complains to the police ; if one Already, in is struck, one asks for damages and costs. our own time, only an ambitious or an ignorant man, or a
The
fool, feels hatred.
disappear
moreover,
;
like the visit of
mere form.
an
it
—
duel is
that piece of absurdity
—
will
at present treated in its details
and very often the
official,
fighting is
Capital punishment will either disappear, or be
only maintained as a
means
of prevention, for the purpose
of mechanically frightening hereditary criminals, or habitual
Prisons and gallows will probably be demolished,
criminals.
to be replaced
simplest form
;
by transportation, which is elimination in its even the rigour of prison-life has already
been mitigated.* More air and light are allowed to enter into the prison. The iron bars, which confine the prisoner without shutting out the rays of sunlight too much, symbolically represent the ideal of penal justice, which may be expressed by this * For
all
offences
rightly proposed or,
finally,
Philos.,
a.
whith do not
entail transportation
forced military service under severe
May,
M. Le Bon has
fine, or compulsory labour (industrial or agricultural),
1881).
perversion than of
known that our prisons conversion. They are places It is
association for the evil-doers
—"
dents of the Court of Appeal,
discipline
(Revue
are rather places of of reunion and of
anti-social clubs."
One
M. B&anger, wrote
that every year
of the presi-
a
hundred thousand individuals " there (in prison) plunge deeper into crime." It may be a million in ten years. Hence the considerable increase of relapses. (This increase is, on an average, over two thousand per annum.
—
1
PENAL OR DEFENSIVE JUSTICE IN SOCIETY. formula
scientific
-The
maximum
10
of social defence with the
[.^
minimum of individual suffering. In this way, the more we progress truth imposes itself even
the more the theoretical on the masses, and lessens the
popular need of punishment. punishes,
it is
committed
;
it
If,
these days, society
in
never on account of th£ deed which has been
because of those which the evil-doer, or his example, may commit in the future.
is
others following
Sanction has value only as a promise or a threat preceding the act
act, is
and tending mechanically
accomplished,
it
to
produce
entirely loses its value.
it.
It is
If this
simply
and nothing more. It is really for this reason that, for instance, madmen are no longer punished. The punishment was given up, after it had been recognised that the fear of punishment had no appreIt was barely a century before the ciable effect upon them. time of Pinel that popular instinct wanted to punish mad
a
shield or a simple, deterministic spring,
people like
all
other criminals
;
which proves how vague
the ideas of responsibility or irresponsibility are in the vulgar and utilitarian conception of social sanction. in
When,
bygone times, the people demanded cruel punishments
harmony with the morals of
in
not in the
name
name
their
day, they
of metaphysical ideas, but rather
did
so,
in the
Neither ought our legislators, who day are labouring to reduce pain to the necessary amount, to put forward these metaphysical
of social interest.
the present
in
strictly
and " absolute responsibility," in themselves, no more justify social punishment than metaphysical irresponsibility and metaphysical determinism. That which alone justifies pain is its efficacy, from the point ideas any more.
" Free-will "
of view of social defence.*
We must,
therefore, approve of the new school of jurists, which is numerous and brilliant in Italy, and which endeavours to place penal right outside all moral and metaphysical considerations. Let us, however, remark that this school is wrong when, after having
*
particularly
put aside every idea of metaphysical responsibility,
it
considers itself
>
\ '
'
{
l82
MORALITY INDEPENDENT OF OBLIGATION OR SANCTION.
In the same way as social punishments are in our time being reduced to that which
rewards
(titles
obliged by
own
its
is
necessary, social
strictly
of nobility, honorary posts, etc.) also principles to equally put aside
'
'
become
the intentional
and
According to Messrs. Lombroso, E. Ferri, and Garofalo, legal judgment must only bear upon the action, and the social or anti-social motives which produced it, without even pretending
voluntary element."
and the intrinsic quality of the Garofalo and Ferri bring forward an example which
to appreciate the greater or lesser power will.
Messrs.
argues against them ; they quote the article of the Italian and French codes which punishes " murder, invohmtary blows, and wounds" with
imprisonment and
fines
(Garofalo,
" Di un
Criterio
Positivo
della
PenaHta," Naples, 1880; E. Ferri, "II Diritto di Punire," Turin, 1882). According to them, this article of the law, not taking into account the will of the criminal, considers the brutal act as entirely
detached from the intention which dictated it. This law, in their eyes, is one of the types with which the laws of the future should conform. But it is a great omission that the article in question should take no account of the will of the criminal.
If the blows
and the wounds said
to
be
be committed by imprudence) were absolutely so, they would not be punished, because the punishment would be ineffective. The truth is that they are caused by lack of attention. Now, attention, being an act of the will, can be mechanically roused or sustained by the fear of pain, and that is why pain involuntary
(or,
rather, said to
demands precisely from man, over and above all amount of attention, a, power and stability of It is the aim of of which the savage, for instance, is incapable.
intervenes.
Social
life
other qualities, a certain will,
penal law, It
is,
find
among
other things, to develop the will in this direction.
therefore, also
" any
not on his
wrong
own
initiative
and E. Ferri do not him who has committed a crime,
that Messrs. Carrara
social responsibility " in
or from an anti-social motive, but because
somebody else has forced him to strike with a dagger or give the poison. Such a man, whatever modern Italian jurists may think, constitutes a certain danger to society undoubtedly, not because of his passions, or
even of his personal actions, but simply because of his weakness of will. He is an instrument instead of being a person. Now, it is always Somedangerous in a State to have instruments instead of citizens.
may exist, not only in the exterior motives which act on the will, but even in the nature of this will. Now, in all cases in which something anti-social may be found there is cause for Ifegal Human penal law, therefore, must not be considered assanction. being absolutely of the same order as the pretended natural sanction thing anti-social
PENAL OR DEFENSIVE JUSTICE IN SOCIETY.
much more
rare
Formerly,
exceptional.
which deduces the consequences of a given act falling into the
water
—without ever concerning
intention which preceded the act (E. Ferri, p.
25).
83
if a he was If he was the conqueror, he was
and more
general was conquered, he was sentenced to death
even crucified sometimes.
1
—
for instance, that of
itself
"
II
;
about the will and
Uiritto di Punire,"
No, the inward determinism of the individual should not
and, because a judge is not compelled ; an act is morally or metaphysically free, it does not follow that he is in any case whatever right to neglect to examine the amount of attention and intention in short, the degree of conscious By degrees punishment will with which this act was accomplished. has now-a-days become only a measure of social precaution ; but this precaution must aim, not only at the act and its motives, but also at the This will, whatever may be its will which is hidden behind these. ultimate and metaphysical nature, is mechanically a force the greater or It less intensity of which must be reckoned with in social calculations. would be absurd for an engineer, wanting to dam in a river, to consider only the volume of its water, without taking into account the force of Let it be well understood, however, that the current sweeping it along. we in no sense make the will " a mysterious faculty placed behind the motives. The will of which I wished to speak is for us simply character the system of tendencies of all kinds which the individual is accustomed to obey, and which constitute his moral self ; in short, the greater or lesser resistance which this fund of inward energy is able to present to entirely escape legal appreciation
to ask himself if
—
—
'
'
—
anti-social motives.
We
believe that the appreciation of the courts of
justice will always take into consideration, not only the statement of the act, but also the person himself, and even the character of the accused. Not only will the motives and springs of action have to be more or less judged, but the persons (who are themselves but complicated systems of motives and springs, which counterbalance each other, and form a living equilibrium). In other
determinating motives of a given
terms, there exists only a social responsibility, not in any sense a moral
one ; but I may add that the individual is not only responsible for such or such an anti-social act and passing motives which may have urged him he is responsible for his very character ; and it is, above to this act The jurymen all, this character which penal law must try to reform. :
always want to judge the person, and allow themselves to be influenced
by good
or
bad antecedents. They often ca?ry this to excess ; but I wrong in principle, because an act is never isolated,
believe they are not
but
is
simply a symptom ; and, therefore, social sanction ought to bear as a whole.
on the individual
— 184
MORALITY INDEPENDENT OF OBLIGATION OR SANCTION. and
called imperator,
carried about in triumph.
In our
days a general need not expect either such honours or so lamentable an end. Society is based on a system of exchange.
I
He who renders a service counts upon receiving, by virtue of economic laws, not a sanction, but simply another service ; an honorarium, or salary, takes the place of the reward, properly so called.
One good deed
calls forth
another by
—
In reality, reward as it existed, and still exists to-day, in non-democratic societies always leads to privilege. The author, for instance, formerly chosen by the king to receive a pension, was surely a a kind of natural equilibrium.
privileged writer sell is
;
while now-a-days the author whose books
simply a writer
who
is
read.
Reward was formerly
often it very In this way pretended distributive justice really produces most shocking injustice. Moreover, the very man who was rewarded lost
considered so entirely as a privilege that
became
hereditary, like fiefs
or
titles.
thereby in moral dignity for that which he received appeared to himself only as a gift, instead of being a legitimate possession. It is a remarkable thing that the economic system which tends to predominate among us ;
has, in
V
some
respects,
a
much more moral
system of pretended distributive justice
aspect than the ;
for,
instead of
making us liegemen, it makes us legitimate and absolute possessors of all which we earn by our works and our labour. Everything which in the past was obtained by reward or by favour will be obtained more and more by competition. Competition, in which M. Renan sees a degrading agent in modern society to-day, allows the man of talent to create his own position, and to owe the place which he attains to his own efforts. Now, competition is a means of superseding reward and largess by payment due. The further we go, the more everyone is conscious of what is due to him, and claims it but that which is due to everyone loses more and more the character of a sanction, and takes that of an engagement binding both on society and on the individual. ;
— PENAL OR DEFENSIVE JUSTICE IN SOCIETY.
1
85
In the same way as certain social rewards, which we mentioned just now, so the other more vague rewards of public esteem and of popularity, also tend to lose their importance
as
Among
goes on.
civilization
man
a god, or at least partly-civilized peoples he still
popular
Among
very
is
a
is
savages a one-
nearly
man
of super-
In time he form, " an instrument of Providence." become, in the eyes of all, a man and nothing more. The infatuation of nations for Caesars and Napoleons will
human will
Already, in these days, the only truly great to be that of the men of science ;
gradually pass.
and durable fame seems and, these being, above
stand them, will
who
all,
admired by people who under-
are but a very small number, their glory
always be limited to a small
tide of
human
heads,
accustomed
fore, get
that of a small
They
men to
number
Lost in the rising
circle.
of talent or of genius
need only to sustain
them
will,
there-
own esteem and
their
in their
labours.
pave the way in the world for themselves and for humanity, urged onward more by inward force than by the will
The
attraction of rewards.
name
that the
we
still
of a
cling to
it
further
man comes
we
go, the
to be of
little
essential
thing.
feel
from a kind of conscious childishness
but the deed, for ourselves as well as for
working almost
more we
importance
The people
of
all
is
;
the
high intelligence, while
silently in loftier spheres,
see the small ones, the lowest, those
or merit, take a growing part in
others,
who
must rejoice to
are without
name
the pre-occupations of
many more efforts are made to who are unhappy, or even guilty, than to overwhelm with benefactions those who are happy enough to be on the top rung of the human ladder. For instance, a new law concerning the masses or the poor has more interest for us than any event which may happen to some high personage in the past it was just the contraryPersonal questions will be effaced to leave room for the humanity.
In these days
alleviate the fate of those
;
abstract ideas of science, or for the concrete sentiment of
1
MORALITY INDEPENDENT OF OBLIGATION OR SANCTION.
86
and philanthropy.
pity
The misery
of a social group will
and kind deeds than the We shall wish more to merit of a certain individual. help those who suffer than to reward in a brilliant and superFor distributive ficial way those who have acted well. justice, which is an entirely individual and personal justice,
more
invincibly attract attention
(if such words are not a paradox), must, be substituted a justice of a more absolute charCharity for all acter, and which at bottom is really charity. men, whatever may be their moral, intellectual, or physical worth, should be the final aim to be pursued even by
a justice of privilege therefore,
public opinion.
CHAPTER Criticism of
Every appeared
Inward Sanction and of Remorse. sanction,
exterior
III.
punishment,
or
reward,
has
us sometimes as a cruelty, sometimes as a
to
no purely moral reason for thus an absolute proportion between happiness and virtue, is there a moral reason for
privilege.
If
there
is
establishing outside the individual
seeing this proportion realized within the individual through his se?isibility
1
In other words, must there and can there use the words of Kant, 2^ pathological
exist in conscience, to
state of pleasure or pain, a
sanctions the moral law
;
kind of moral pathology which and must morality d priori have
consequences in which
the passions play a large part? Let us imagine, by hypothesis, a virtue so heterogeneous to nature that it would neither have any perceptible character, nor find itself in conformity with any social or personal instinct,
or with any natural passion, any Tra^os, but only
Let us imagine, on the other hand, an of the will which, while being the negation of the " laws of pure practical reason," would, at the same time, not meet with resistance from any natural
with pure reason.
immoral direction
CRITICISM OF INWARD SANCTION AND OF REMORSE.
1
87
impulse, any natural passion (not even, hypothetically, the natural pleasure of exact reasoning, the pleasant feeling of logical
exercise
case (which, after
according to all, is
rule).
Would
it,
in
this
not to be found in humanity), be
and a demerit having no relation be added perceptible pain or pleasure Moral satisfaction and remorse also, as
rational that to a merit to the visible should
—a
•
pathology
?
—
much as pleasure, pain, and the passions that is as much as all the simple phenomena of sensation Kant not
to
He
sees in
less inexplicable
it
to say,
— seem
than the idea of duty
itself.
a mystery.*
But this mystery resolves itself into an impossibility. If moral merit were pure conformity to rational law as such, pure rationality, pure formalism, and if it were the deed of pure transcendental liberty foreign to every natural impulse, it would produce no joy in the order of nature, no expansion of the living being, no inward warmth, no throbbing of the heart.
In the same way,
if
the evil
demerit, could hypothetically find
itself,
will,
the source of
at the
same
time,
not contrary to any of the natural impulses of our being, but was serving them all, it could not produce any
Demerit would,
suffering.
in that case, naturally
have to
end in perfect happiness of the senses and of the passions. That this does not happen is because the moral or immoral act, even when one supposes it to be intentionally suprasensible,
nature.
still
If
meets aids or obstacles in our pathological
we enjoy
or suffer,
* Crit. de la liaison Pratique,
tr.
it is
no longer
in so far as
M.
Janet, inspired
Barni, p. 121.
doubt by Kant, and perhaps by the theologians, also objects to deducing the sentiment of remorse from immorality. He seems to see in it the proof of a kind of mysterious harmony preestablished between nature and the moral law. "Remorse," he says, "is the smarting pain, the sting which tortures the heart after a guilty deed. This suffering has not any moral character, and must be considered as a kind oi punishment inflicted upon crime by nature herself" (Tr. de without
Philos., p. 673).
l88
MORALITY INDEPENDENT OF OBLIGATION OR SANCTION.
our intention
conformable or contrary to a rationally
is
fixed law, to a law of supranatural liberty, but in so far as it finds itself, at the same time, conformable or contrary to our
always more or
less variable sense-nature.
In other words, moral satisfaction or remorse does not proceed entirely a priori from our relation to a moral law, but from our relation to the natural and empirical laws. Even the mere pleasure of reasoning, which we may feel in generalizing a maxim of conduct, can yet only be explained by the natural tendency of the mind to go beyond every personal limit, and, in a general way, by the tendency of all activity to everlastingly continue a
movement once begun. not made to intervene, all
If empirical considerations
become unexplain-
purely logical enjoyment will not only able, but
are
moral, or even rational, or even
A
i priori impossible.
superiority of the order
of reason over that of sensation and of nature might well enough be admitted, but not a possible echo of these two orders, the entirely
d,
echo, which
one mingling with the other
is
posteriori.
To render inward sanction truly moral, it should have naught of the sensible or the pathological that is to say, it should have nothing which is pleasant and nothing which is painful to the passions. It should be like the apathy of
—
means a perfect and supra-passionate
an ataraxy, a It should
the Stoics, which
serenity,
supra-sensible
satisfaction.
be, with regard to this world, the nirvana of the Buddhists,
the
complete
therefore,
detachment from
lose
all
character
all
of
ira^os.
sensible
should,
It
sanction.
A
supra-sensible law can only have a supra-sensible sanction,
which
is
consequently
natural pleasure
unknown
and pain
;
and
to that
this
minate for us as the supra-sensible order
The
which
sanction
is
is
called
as indeter-
itself.
sanction called moral and truly sensible
is
really
a particular case of that natural law according to which every development of activity
is
accompanied by pleasure.
This
CRITICISM OF INWARD SANCTION
AND OF REMORSE.
1
891
pleasure diminishes, disappears, or gives place to suffering,,
according to the inward or outward resistances which the activity meets. In the inward self of the individual the
may meet
activity
the
mind and
this
resistance either in the nature of
the intellectual temperament, or in the character-
and the moral temperainent. Evidently the aptitudes of the mind differ according to the individual. It will be difficult for a poet to be a good lawyer and one understands the sufferings of Alfred de Musset as a clerk in an office. It will be also difficult for an imaginative poet to be a mathematician and one understands the protestations of Victor Hugo against the " torture of the X's and Y's."" Every intelligence seems to have a certain number of directions, in which hereditary habit pushes it by preference. If it ;
;
deviates from these directions, in
certain
cases,
become
nearly " moral " remorse.
it
suffers.
truly
Let
This suffering may,
heartrending,
us, for
and very
example, think of an
who feels genius stirring in him, and who is condemned to manual labour for the whole of his life. This artist
feeling of a lost
the
same way
of an unfulfilled task, of an unrealized and haunt his sensibility more or less in would the consciousness of a moral failure.
life,
ideal, will beset
as
Here, therefore, we have an instance of the pleasure or pain
which attends every development of activity in any environment whatever. Let us now pass on from the intellectual temperament to the moral temperament. Here, again, we
many
are in the presence of a great
which
will
obedient or resistant theft,
instinctive impulses,
produce joy or pain, according as the
—impulses
will is
of Such diverse one and the same character, and pull of avarice, of charity,
of sociability, of savagery, of pity, etc.
impulses
may
exist in
about first in one direction, then in another. The joy which the righteous man feels in following his social instincts will, therefore, find its counterpart in the joy which it
the evil
man
feels in following his anti-social instincts.
saying of the young evil-doer,
whom
The
Maudsley mentions,.
V
MORALITY INDEPENDENT OF OBLIGATION OR SANCTION.
TQO is
known
well
:
"
By Jove
!
how
nice
to steal
it is
!
When
!"
Even
if
this joy
still want compensated by any subsequent regret or remorse (and this is what would happen, according to the writers on criminal law, to nine-tenths of the criminals by
I
had
millions, I should
to steal
in evil-doing is not
derangement follows in the direction that which is produced in the
heredity), a complete
conscience, similar to
•of
magnetic needle. The evil instincts stifling all the others, almost entirely from these alone that the pathological
it is
If the young thief, of whom Maudsley had missed an opportunity for theft, he would certainly have suffered inwardly ; he would have had a
:sanction comes. ispeaks,
twinge of remorse. pathological phenomenon designated by the name inward sanction may, therefore, be considered as in itself Sensibility, in indifferent to the moral quality of actions. which phenomena of this kind happen, has by no means
The
•of
the stability of reason
.and of double
;
it
usage,''
belongs to those things, "ambiguous of which Plato
befriend evil as well as good.
Our
;
It
may
our impulses,
—
know what they want they must be and the joy or suffering which they may
our passions, do not
guided by reason
speaks.
instincts,
cause us hardly ever arises from their conformity with the
end which reason proposes
to them, but
from their con-
formity with the end towards which they themselves would naturally turn.
In other words, the joy in well-doing and
the remorse for evil-doing are never proportional in us to the triumph of the moral good or
evil,
but to the struggle
which they have had in fighting against the impulses of our physical and psychical temperament. Although the elements of remorse and of inward joy thus springing from the sensibility are generally variable, there is, however, one which presents a certain fixity, and which may exist in all elevated minds we mean that satisfaction which an individual always feels in being classed with superior beings beings conformable with the normal type of his species, and ;
—
CRITICISM OF INWARD SANCTION
AND OF REMORSE.
I9I
own ideal. This satisfaction corresponds to the intellectual pain of feeling himself fallen
adapted, so to speak, to his
from
his rank
and
his species,
sunk
to the level of inferior
Unfortunately, this kind of satisfaction and this
beings.
kind of
intellectual
remorse only clearly manifest themselves
Moreover, this sanction, limited to moral beings, admits of a certain provisional antinomy. In fact, the pain caused by the contrast between our ideal and our real state must be in philosophic minds.
a small
all
number
of
the greater to us, as
ideal
;
for in that case
we we
distance separating us from
are
more
it.
conscious of the
Susceptibility of consciefice,
increases in proportion
therefore,
fully
get a clearer perception of the
to the
conscience, and the vividness of remorse
development of a measure of
is
In the same way, as more sensitive to all kinds of pain coming from outside, and as, on the average, a white man, for instance, suffers in his life more than a negro, so the more highly organized beings are morally more exposed
our very
efforts
towards morality.
superior organisms are always
than others to that suffering arising from inward causes, whose cause is always in action the suffering from the
—
unrealized ideal. scruples,
but in
its
True remorse, with
inward tortures,
may
its
strike
subtlety, its painful
men, not
in inverse,
direct, ratio to their perfection.
As a matter of
fact,
popular morality, and even morality as
understood by Kant, tend to turn remorse into expiation, a mysterious and inexplicable relation between moral will and nature. They tend, in the same way, to find a reward in moral satisfaction. As to ourselves, we have tried to bring
back sensible remorse
to
a simple natural resistance of the
deepest impulses of our being, and sensible satisfaction to a natural sentiment of facility, of ease, of liberty, which we experience
when
yielding to these impulses.
supra-sensible sanction,
be
— unknown
±0 the
Trddos.
it
must be
—
let
If there is
us repeat
it,
it
a
must
to the senses properly so-called, to the passions,
All the same,
we
are far from denying the
192
MORALITY INDEPENDENT OF OBLIGATION OR SANCTION.
practical utility of
law,
what are called moral pleasures and moral as, penal
Suffering, for instance, if not justifiable
sufiferings.
very often justifiable as
is
valuable
if it
utility.
Remorse becomes
can serve some definite purpose,
if it
is
the
consciousness of some remaining imperfection, whether in its causes or its effects, of which the past act was simply the sign.
It
itself, but upon upon the conse-
does not then bear upon the act
the imperfection revealed by the act, or
quences following in
From
forward.
its
this
train
;
it
is
an incentive urging us
point of view, which
is
not that of
sanction in the proper sense, the suffering caused by remorse, even all suffering in general, and every austerity, acquires a
moral value which must not be neglected, and which has but too often been neglected by pure utilitarians. Bentham's horror of anything reminding him of the " ascetic principle," or of anything which seemed to him the least sacrifice of pleasure, is well known. He was wrong. Suffering may sometimes be morally like bitter medicine a powerful The patient himself feels the need of it. He who tonic. has abused pleasure is the first to wish for, and to relish,
—
pain.
It is
for
a similar reason
that,
undue use of
sweets,
one comes to
The
vicious
man
quinine.
will
having made an infusion of
after
relish
not only get to hate his vice,
but also the very enjoyments it yielded him he despises them so deeply that, in order to give himself evidence of Every stain needs a this, he likes to feel himself in pain. ;
kind of biting remedy to efface it. Pain can be this biting remedy. If it can never constitute a moral sanction patho-
— —
and moral evil being heterogeneous it may sometimes become a useful caustic. Under this new aspect logical evil
sanction has an unquestionable remedial value
;
but
first,
for
must consent to it must demand it. Moreover, it must be remembered that remedial treatment should neither last too long nor, above All religions and classic morality have underall, be eternal. stood the value of pain, but they have abused it. They it
to be truly moral, the individual himself
—
have acted
like surgeons
who, wonder-struck at the results
RELIGIOUS SANCTION.
1
93
of their operations, ask nothing but to cut off arms and " Cutting off" should never be an aim in itself; and legs. to " sew
up again " should be the very
Remorse
is
definitely
good
We
only of value in so far as
it
last
resource of
leads
more
all.
surely to
resolution.
have shown that remorse may be considered under two aspects sometimes as the painful and relatively /a^^/w statement of a fact (disobedience to a more or less deeplyrooted impulse of our being, a falling below the ideal of the
—
individual, either with relation to the species or to his
conception), sometimes as an effort
but active and failure.
energetic,
Under
its first
physically necessary
;
an
still
effort to rise
aspect remorse
but
it
more or less
own
painful,
out of this state of
may be
and
logically
only becomes morally good by
assuming its second character. Remorse, therefore, is the more moral the less it resembles true sanction. There are temperaments in which the two kinds of remorse are clearly enough divided. There are some which feel a very stinging, and yet a perfectly useless, pain ; there are others which (reason and will being predominant in them) need no very acute pain to recognise their evil-doing, and to impose reparation on themselves. These latter are superior from a moral point of view, which proves that the so-called inward sanction, like all others, justifies itself only in so far as
a means of
it is
action.
CHAPTER Criticism of Religious
IV.
and Metaphysical Sanction. I.
RELIGIOUS SANCTION.
The
further
we advance
sanction, properly so-called
in this criticism, the
—that
is
more does
to say, moral "pathology
—seem
to us a kind of fence,
there
a path marked out, and someone walking in
is
"
being of use only when
o
it.
MORALITY INDEPENDENT OF OBLIGATION OR SANCTION.
194
Beyond
life,
in the eternal void, the fences
there
is
become
once the probation of life no coming back to it, unless it be, let
superfluous.
is
If
it
entirely
ended,
be well
understood, for the sake of deriving experience and wise lessons from it, in the case of our having to begin fresh
Such
trials.
is
not the idea of the principal
Religions, in so far as they
conduct, obedience to certain
command rites, faith
human
religions.
a certain rule of in such and such a
need a sanction to strengthen their commands. They all agree in calling upon the most formidable sanction imaginable ; to those who have transgressed their orders, in one way or another, they promise eternal suffering, and threaten them with horrors far beyond any which the imagination of the most furious man dreams of inflicting upon his most deadly enemy. In this, as in many other points, religions are in total disagreement with the spirit of our
dogma,
time
all
but
;
it is
strange to think that they are
still
followed
by a great many philosophers and metaphysicians Imagining God as the most terrible of all powers, one comes to the conclusion that, in his anger, he must inflict the most terrible of punishments. One forgets that God this supreme ideal should simply be incapable of hurting anyone, and, with Precisely still more reason, be unable to return evil for evil. because God is conceived as the maximum of power, he should be able to inflict only the minimum of pain ; for the greater the force over which one has command, the less need is there to use it to obtain a certain effect. Besides, as he is believed to be the highest goodness, it is impossible to picture him inflicting even this minimum of pain. The " Heavenly Father " should at least have this supe.
—
—
riority
over earthly fathers, of not flogging his children.
he is hypothetically the supreme intelligence, we cannot believe that he would do anything unreasonable. Now, for what reason would he cause the evil-doer to suffer ? Finally, as
God
is
above
all
insult,
and need not defend himself;
therefore he should not strike.
—— RELIGIOUS SANCTION.
1 95
Religious systems always have a tendency to represent the bad man as a Titan engaged in a struggle against God himself. It is quite natural that Jupiter, once being the conqueror, should in future guard himself, and crush his opponent under a mountain. But it is a strange idea to
God
imagine
as being thus materially able to fight evil-
and
doers, without losing his majesty
moment when
the
undertakes a physical struggle with evil-doers, loses
character of law,
its
victim
—
it
A
fails.
lowers
it
Either God, this living law,
Jacob.
it
like
is
thus
inevitably
with a
fight
to being overthrown,
exposes himself
Law "
the level of
itself to
god cannot
From
his sanctity.
" Moral
the personified
man
its
he the angel by
all-powerful
;
—and
we cannot truly offend him, nor should he punish us or we really can offend him but in that case we in some way influence him, and he is not all-powerful, not " the The founders of religions have absolute," not God. then
;
imagined that the most sacred law should be also the strongest law
it is
;
The
absolutely the reverse.
idea of force logically
resolves itself into the relation between
ance
;
What
every physical force
is,
power and
a strange and very anthropomorphic conception to
imagine
God
his servant
as keeping a gaol, or a " hell,"
and gaol-keeper the Devil
more responsible
!
In
and having fact,
for hell than the executioner is for the
he should even be very much pitied
made
to do.
for
the Devil is
instruments of torture which are put into his hands
is
resist-
therefore, morally a weakness.
The
;
for the sort of
maybe, work he
real responsibility is not his.
only the executioner of high and divine works
;
and a
He
is
pihilo-
sopher might maintain, not without likelihood, that the true If a human law, if a civil law, cannot do Devil here is God. without physical sanction, the reason
is
—
as
we have seen
and human. It is not the same with the " Moral Law," which is supposed to protect only a principle, and which is represented as immovable, eternal, precisely because
it is
civil
to a certain extent passive;
it
is
impossible to be moved
MORALITY INDEPENDENT OF OBLIGATION OR SANCTION.
196
Force being powerless in the not necessary that the law should answer
before an immovable law.
presence of
by
it, it
He who
force.
always find
will
the giant,
it
thinks to have overthrown moral law
confronting
him
again, as Hercules
whom
he thought he had finally up time after time from under
ground, rise
be
is
that
eternal,
is
felled
saw
to the
his grip.
To
the only possible revenge of goodness
with regard to those who violate it. If God had created beings with natures so perverse as to
always act contrary to his commands, he would, in their He could only pity presence, be reduced to impotence.
His duty them, and pity himself for having created them. would not be to strike them, but to alleviate their misfortune as much as possible ; to show himself all the more
and better, in proportion as they were worse. Those doomed, if they were really incurable, would, after all, be more in need of the delights of heaven than the chosen ones themselves. One of two things either the in that case the evil-doers may be converted to goodness so-called hell will only be a school on a very large scale, in which an attempt will be made to open the eyes of all the outcasts, and to enable them to ascend to heaven as quickly as possible or the evil-doers are beyond cure, like incurable maniacs (which is absurd) in that case they also will be everlastingly pitiful, and a supreme goodness must try to compensate them for their misery by all imaginable means, by the sum of all possible happiness. In whatever manner it be understood, the dogma of hell thus appears the gentle
who
are
:
—
;
;
very reverse of truth. Besides, it
away
—
by damning a soul that from his presence,
for ever
is
to say,
or, in less
by turning mysterious
—
from the truth God would turn himself away from his soul, would limit his own power, and would, so to say, damn himself also to a certain
words, by shutting
extent. it.
As
The
it
out for ever
pain of damnation recoils on him
to the physical suffering singled out
who
inflicts
by theologians.
;
THE SANCTION OF LOVE AND OF FRATERNITY.
197
when taken in a metawho have gone wrong, God should only everlastingly call them back to him. it
is
We
bearable
evidently far less
phorical sense.
Instead of damning those
it is, above all, for two arms so widely on the
should say, with Michael Angelo,
evil-doers that
symbol of the
God opens cross.
We
his
picture
him
as looking
on
every-
thing from so great a height that in his eyes outcasts are
never anything but unfortunates. are unhappy, as such,
not from
if
Now, must not those who other standpoints, be
all
the favourites of the infinite goodness
?
II.
THE SANCTION OF LOVE AND OF FRATERNITY.
Thus
far
we have considered the two aspects of sanction and reward as if bound together but, consider them separately. it is possible to
—punishment perhaps,
—
Certain philosophers,
for
;
instance,
seemed
disposed
to
reward properly so-called, and the right to reward to admit punishment only as being legitimate.* reject
This first position is, we believe, the most difficult which can be taken up in examining the question. There is a second one, quite opposed to it, which another philosopher has taken up, and which, in order to be thorough, we also must examine. It is to entirely reject punishment, but to try, nevertheless, to maintain a rational relation between
—
" We admit without hesitation the stoic maxim virtue is its own Could one conceive a geometrical triangle, which, being hypothetically endowed with consciousness and liberty, and which, *
reward
having succeeded in disengaging its pure essence from the conflict of material causes, which on all sides tend to violate its nature could
—
one conceive
this triangle
exterior things from
to require in addition
whose dominion
(M. P. Janet, " La Morale,"
p. 590).
it
a prize from those
had already freed
itself?"
^-"^
198
MORALITY INDEPENDENT OF OBLIGATION OR SANCTION. (M. Fouillee, "La Liberty
merit and happiness.
et le Deter-
minisme.")
Thfs doctrine renounces the idea of Kant, which makes
The
merit conform to an entirely formal law. is
immense community,
represented as an
in
always a duty towards an active, a living being. community " he who loves must be loved "; is
more
natural
happiness "
To
?
to
is
becomes a
The
all
duty
In this what is deserves
good will the good which he a
everybody with
that
wishes to do good to him in return for
has tried to do
man
say that the virtuous
say
universe
which
relation of merit to happiness thus
relation of will to will, of person to person, a
and consequently of
relation of gratitude,
The
fraternity
and
between good actions and happiness would thus be found in the idea of return and gratitude. Loving-kindness would be the moral love
new
" (ibid).
principle
link sought
of sanction
—a
for
principle which, while ex-
cluding punishment, would be sufficient to justify a kind of reward, non-material, but moral.
sanction
Let us note that this
not valid for an individual, who, hypothetically,
is
might be considered absolutely to the doctrine
we
solitary.
are examining, there
But, according
nowhere
exists
an individual. One cannot get outside society, because one cannot get outside the universe. Moral law is, therefore, fundamentally only a social law, and that which we have said with respect to the actual relations between men such
holds good also for the ideal relations of
From
another. v/
this
point
of
all
beings one
view, reward
mth
becomes a
kind of " response " of love. Every good action is like an " appeal " addressed to all beings of the vast universe. It
seems against
listened to,
and
all
law that this appeal should not be produce gratitude.
that love should not
Love presupposes mutuality of love, consequently co-operaand helpfulness, consequently satisfaction of desire and
tion
happiness. person,
it
As
to
the evident unhappiness of
would be explained
in
any one
accordance with this
THE SANCTION OF LOVE AND OF FRATERNITY. doctrine by the presence of
some blind
will
199
opposing him
from the midst of nature, from the midst of universal society. Now, if, hypothetically, a being is truly loving, he will
become
eyes of
all
lovable not only in the eyes of men, but in the
the elementary wills which
will thus acquire
make up
nature.
It
a kind of ideal right to be respected and
—consequently —
be made happy by may be considered as being brought about by a kind of war and blind
by them
assisted
them.
hatred of inferior
we become
to
pain, illness, death
All tangible evils
—
If this will takes for its victim love
wills.
and what could be more just ? can be requited only with love, we at least have the consciousness that this must be done with the love of the whole of nature, not only with the love of such or such an individual. This love of the whole of itself,
indignant,
If the love of others
may become happiness for him outward happiness included. The link between goodwill and happiness, which we desired to break, will be re-established. This hypothesis, we admit, is the last and only resource nature thus generalized
who
receives
for
metaphysically
it,
justifying
of indignation which panies goodwill.
that
empirical
sentiment
produces in us if it accomus note well what the hypothesis
pain
Only
let
involves.
In
this doctrine
it
will finally
have to be admitted, without
proof, that all the wills constituting nature are analogous in
essence and direction, in such a way as to converge towards the same point.
If,
for instance, the
good pursued by a
society of wolves were fundamentally as different from the
good pursued by human society as it apparently seems to be, the goodness of a man would rationally have no connection with that of a wolf, nor the goodness of a wolf with that of
a man.
The preceding
hypothesis must, therefore, be com-
pleted by this other very seductive and hazardous one, which we ourselves have elsewhere defined as possible. " Is there
not a tendency, an inward aspiration, eternally the same, and
;
200
MORALITY INDEPENDENT OF OBLIGATION OR SANCTION.
which corresponds with that exterior which the forms are so varied ? Should there not be between them a connection of tendencies and efforts similar to the anatomical connection in organisms pointed out by G. Saint-Hilaire ?" (see our " Morale Anglaise Conat
work
in all beings,
evolution, of
temporaine," p. 370, and
M.
Fouill^e, "
La Science
Sociale
Contemporaine," book v.). According to this doctrine, the idea of sanction becomes blended with the moral idea of "co-operation." He who does good universally labours at so great a task that he has a right to
ideally
members
they are
all
beings,
same whole, from the
since
first
cell
He, on the contrary, who commits evil ought to receive from all a " refusal of co-operation,'' which would be a kind of negative punishment; he ought to find himself morally to
/
the co-operation of of the
the grey brain-matter of the highest organism.
isolated,
whereas the other should be in communion with
the universe.
—
—
this purified, saved by metaphysics harmony between the morally good and hapBut, in the first place, piness certainly becomes admissible. it is no longer truly the sanction of a formal law ; all that
Thus
restricted,
idea of final
remains of the ideas of necessary or imperative law, of equally necessary sanction, properly so-called, has disappeared.
It is
no longer even the formal law of Kant,
nor the synthetical a priori judgment by which legality should be united to happiness as reward. In one word, it is no longer a system of legislation, nor, consequently, of
We
true sanction. "^
'
can even say that we are here transported
to a sphere higher than that of justice, properly so-called it is
the sphere of brotherhood.
It is
no longer the
justice
of equal exchange, for the idea of brotherhood excludes that of mathematical exactly nieasurable,
not measure returns two,
its
exchange, of a balance of services
and equal
and even
Goodwill does
in quantity.
return according to what tenfold, for one.
it
has received
It is
;
it
no longer even
— THE SANCTION OF LOVE AND OF FRATERNITY. distributive justice in
its
201
exact sense, for the idea of an
even moral, distribution is no longer that of brotherhood. The prodigal son might be received even exact, or
more warmly than the good son. An evil-doer might be and perhaps the evil-doer may need to be loved, more than any other. I have two hands one to clasp the hand of those with whom I go through life, the other to
loved,
—
who fall. To the latter I might even stretch forth both my hands together. Thus, in this sphere, purely rational relations, purely intellectual harmonies, and with even greater reason legal relations seem to disappear ; thus even the truly rational, logical, and even quantitative relation vanishes, which should bind the good will to a certain proportion of outward good and of inward love. From this results a kind of antinomy. Love is either a particular grace, and an election, which bears hardly any resemblance to sanction, or it is a kind of general grace, and an ideal, far-reaching equality between all beings, which even less resembles sanction. If I love raise those
—
—
one man better than another, it is not certain that my love must be in direct ratio to his merit and if I love all men for their humanity if I love them universally, equally the proportion between merit and love seems still more to disappear. Besides, men of " goodwill " would undoubtedly ;
—
themselves dislike, according to ideal justice, to be the object of any mark of preference ; the voluntary victims of love would not consent to be placed in any way before others in the case of any redistribution of material goods.
would object pitied
superiority of the ideal
when
this
give
rise.
;
to
supra-sensible wealth has given
material inconvenience
Such are the •will
be him who admits the over the real, the good man is the
than imposed suffering
rich one, even
him
They
that, after all, voluntary suffering is less to
and suffering. which we believe
difficulties to
These
but their solution
difficulties are,
will surely
this
theory
perhaps, not insoluble ;
mean a thorough
modification
202
MORALITY INDEPENDENT OF OBLIGATION OR SANCTION.
of the traditional idea of sanction
—
for,
as far as pain goes,
punishment will have disappeared ; and, as to reward, the compensation belonging to pure justice will seem to vanish before more elevated relations of brotherhood, which shall be free from precise limitations.
On the
one hand, physical
suffering (death included) always rouses indignation morally,
whatever
may be
which causes
the good or bad character of the will Suffering shocks us in
it.
itself,
independently
a distribution of suffering is, On the other hand, as to therefore, morally unintelligible. happiness ^we want all to be happy. These notions cause of
its
point of application
;
—
Proportionality,
great trouble in the balance of sanction. rationality, law, vo/x.os (derived
from
ve/iw, to allot),
are only
and utility, of and of mathecommutation exchange, of defence and of applicable to the relations of social order
Sanction, properly so-called,
matical distribution.
is
there-
an entirely human idea, which enters as a necessary element into the conception of our society, but which might be expelled without contradiction from a highly-elevated
fore
society
composed of sages
like
Buddha and
Jesus.
In short, the utilitarians and the followers of Kant, placed at the two opposite poles of moral philosophy, are never-
same error. The utilitarian, who' may be of his existence in the hope that bring him something in return in the life
theless victims of
the
sacrifices as little as this sacrifice will
beyond, reckons irrationally from his point of view sacrifice
;
for, in
due to him for his interested than would be due to him for an evil act of self-
the absolute, nothing
interest.
On
more
is
the other hand, the disciple of
sacrifices himself,
Kant who
with his eyes shut, for the sake of the law
only, without calculating, without
none the more any
demanding anything, has
compensation or we should give up all reference to aim, and the disciple of Kant does not aim at happiness. It may be objected that, if the moral law constrains us, it is itself bound to do something for us. It
indemnity.
Of
veritable right
course,
if
to
we have no aim
in view,
THE SANCTION OF LOVE AND OF FRATERNITY.
may be
may be an
said that there
to the law
that
;
instance,
for
if,
" appeal from the agent
demands the
the law
annihilation of self without compensation, this cruelty
;
and
is
203
a cruel law just ?" (M. Janet, "
is
supreme
La Morale,"
We answer that it is here necessary to distinguish between two things the fatal circumstances of life, and the law which rules our conduct under these circumstances. The fatal situations of life may be cruel ; let nature be accused of this but a law can never appear cruel to him p. 582).
—
;
who
believes in
stain
a crime cannot
who
believes in a " moral law "
this
law, while regarding
because sible,
law
this
and
is
is
feel
considers every
cruel to remain chaste.
it
it
it
is
For him
impossible to judge
from a human point of view,
hypothetically unconditional, irrespon-
believed to be speaking to us from the very
depths of the absolute. of which
clauses
He who
legitimacy.
its
It
we might
makes no contract with
us, the
quietly debate, weighing
the
—
advantages and disadvantages. At bottom even in the moral philosophy of Kaht sanction is really only a supreme
—
expedient to rationally and materially justify the formal law of sacrifice, the moral law. Sanction is added to the
law to render
it
legitimate.*
* This question-begging, is
really
still
more evident
disguised under the
name
in those systems of morality
openly to keep the mean between
egoistic
absolute disinterestedness, of Stoicism.
of postulate,
which
utilitarianism
try
more
and
The moral philosophy
of
the
M.
Renouvier in France, and of Sidgwick in England, seems to be of " Reason" says M. Renouvier (and the English moralist this kind. entirely agrees on this point), " is only of value and makes itself only linown in so far as it is supposed to be conformable with the final cause, the principle oiiht passions, and happiness The postulate of a final conformity of the moral law with happiness is the induction, the proper hypothesis of moral philosophy. Is this postulate denied?
Then
the moral agent might oppose to the obligation of justice another
obligation
—that
terest such as
we
urge him to
p. 17).
of his
own
he represents
make
it
preservation, to himself.
and
to duty the idea of in-
In the
name of
if^a^ shall
choice of duty?" ("Science de Morale," vol.
M. Renouvier, very
cautious
and circumspect,
tries
i.,
afterwards
MORALITY INDEPENDENT OF OBLIGATION OR SANCTION.
204
The
doctrine of the disciples of Kant, even
more than
that of the utilitarians, if pushed to extremes, would logically end in a complete antinomy between the purely "moral merit" and the idea of a reward, or even of some sort of
might be summed up in the story of an Yves, Eastern woman, told us by the Sieur de Joinville a preaching friar, one day saw at Damascus an old woman tangible hope.
It
:
to
somewhat diminish the importance of
philosophy
them and
ih3.n
to
a.
/>osttilaie
make them
this
acknowledgment by a
a postulate of moral of (Ae passions "necessary to legitimatize
Sanction, he says,
scholastic distinction.
—
is
less
Unfortunately,
enter the sphere of science."
he happens to recognise that
there
cannot
exist
a moral science
independently of the passions, and that the obligation of self-interest If the passions is a power lo^cally equivalent to moral obligation. postulate a sanction, on the other hand moral philosophy postulates In moral philosophy thus conceived, duty the passions ; it is a circle. finds
itself,
with
self-interest.
from the logical point of view, put on equal footing Bentham and Kant are placed on the same level ; it is
at least
owned that both are right, and it is made to appear as if they want the same things in the name of contrary principles. Sanction serves as their
common
meeting-ground, and the supreme principle of remuneration as It is not for us here to appreciate the value of these moral
magistrate.
We only state that the formal law of Kant has disappeared that " the obligation of doing one's duty solely arrangement from duty " no longer exists, and is considered as a mere paradox (" Science de la Morale," vol. i., p. 178) ; that sanction is no longer a In that case this idea conseqtience of duty, but simply a condition. Punishment and reward are no longer entirely changes its aspect. considered as bound to moral conduct by an h priori synthetic judgment ; but they are demanded beforehand by the agents, so as systems. in this
;
commandment of the " law" from The moral 4ct no longer constitutes
to justify the
of view.
right to happiness
but every sensible being
;
hope
naturally a right to it
in
the moral act.
M.
is
the reasonable point in
and
for
itself
a
considered as having
and as unwilling to renounce and Mr. Sidgwick, no longer
for happiness,
Renovivier
maintaining that duty deserves a reward, simply say that the moral agent, expecting a reward,
rewarded.
They invoke,
would be duped
veracity of
the desire, in the same
veracity of
God
right
;
if
one day
it
was not
so to' speak, as their only argument, the
way
as
Descartes invoked the
but the one, as well as the other,
be suspected by every truly
scientific
may
moral philosopher.
with good
THE SANCTION OF LOVE AND OF FRATERNITY. carrying in her right
205
hand a
brazier containing fire, and in " What are Yves asked her you going to do?" She answered that with the fire she wanted to burn paradise, and with the water to extinguish hell. And he asked her " Why do you want to do " Because I do not want anybody ever to do good this ?"
her
a phial of water.
left
:
:
for the sake of gaining paradise as a reward,
One
thing would
would be
to
—
between two joys
The
other superior.
;
happiness
lies
it
this;
Stuart
This hypothesis
himself.
this
and pleasure the one inferior, the
believed
Stoics
and even Epicurus
also;
reconcile everything
to
that, analytically,
that to choose between
;
to choose
still
seem
demonstrate
enfolded in virtue is
nor for fear of
but simply for love of God."
hell,
Mill
may
undoubtedly prove true for a small number of elevated souls, but its complete reahzation is indeed " not of this world." Virtue itself is by no means, here on earth and in itself, a perfect tangible reward, a full compensation (prcemium ipsa
There
virtus).
is little
the outpost and struck
likelihood that a soldier, standing at
down by
the sentiment of duty
fulfilled,
to the happiness of a
whole
ledge
it
there that
is
it
—
virtue
a bullet, would experience, in
sum
a
of enjoyment equivalent
Let
life.
acknowNay, more ;
us, therefore,
not tangible happiness.
is
no natural
reason, nor any purely
should ever become
so.
Besides,
moral reason,
when
certain alter-
natives arise, the moral being has the feeling of being caught
he is bound, he is confined, by "duty." He cannot free himself, and can but await the working of the great social or natural mechanism which must crush him. in a snare;
He
gives
way
—
while, perhaps, regretting that
The
have been the victim chosen. is,
in
a good
theless,
many
one draws
some pride
cases, the it,
binds
—and departs.
drawing of a bad
it
on one's brow
Duty, in
of the tragic events which burst on very nearly escape
it
;
he should
necessity of self-sacrifice
its
life.
lot.
—not
Neverwithout
acute state, forms parts
There are
lives
which
they are generally considered happy.
206
MORALITY INDEPENDENT OF OBLIGATION OR SANCTION.
duty can thus make real victims, do these victims acquire exceptional rights to a material compensation, rights If
superior to that of other unfor-
to a material happiness,
tunates, of other martyrs of so.
All
life ?
It
does not appear to be always appears
suffering, involuntary or voluntary,
and this solely Compensation that is to say, a is a word which indicates an entirely logical and It is the same material, but in no sense a moral, relation. with the words " reward " and " punishment," which have They are terms which belong to the the same sense. sphere of the passions, and are wrongly transferred to moral language. The ideal compensation of material benefits and evils is all that one can observe in the popular ideas We must remember that the of punishment and reward. ancient Nemesis punished, not only the wicked, but also those who were happy those who had had more than their In the same way, Christianity, in share of enjoyment. to us as
demanding an
because it balancing
ideal compensation,
—
suffering.
is
—
—
primitive times, considered the poor, the
weak
in
mind
or
body, as having the best chance of one day being the chosen The rich man of the Gospel is threatened with hell, ones. without any other apparent reason than his very wealth.
The
first
of-scales
shall
The
ours.
ideal
for all beings, is
be
last.
method seems
Even
in the present
seems to be absolute equality of happiness may be ; life, on the contrary,
good or
to a reparation
—a
The ocean
ling.
pair-
whatsoever they
a perpetual consecration of inequality.
living beings,
day the
to us desirable for this world of
evil,
sort of
The
majority of
might, therefore, ideally pretend
balance of joys, a universal level-
of things would have to be levelled.
No
induction whatever drawn from nature leads us to suppose that this would ever happen quite the contrary ; and, on the other hand, from no moral system whatever carl one
—
deduce recognition of a true moral right to any compensation for actual suffering. This compensadesired by the senses, is by no means demanded by
strictly
definite tion,
—
THE SANCTION OF LOVE AND OF FRATERNITY. reason.
It is entirely doubtful, as far as
—perhaps even impossible.* *
science
is
207
concerned
"We
do not think that the belief in religious sanction works any which a being, morally unsound, presents to every healthy being. Crime can offer man but one single attraction that of having the chance of procuring wealth for himself. But wealth, whatever may be its popular value, is nevertheless not without common measure as regards everything else. Propose to a poor man to make him a millionaire, at the same time inflicting gout upon him, and he will refuse, if he has any shadow of common sense. Propose to him to be rich upon condition of being bandy-legged or hump-backed, and he will probably refuse this also, especially if he is young ; every woman would refuse. The difficulty experienced in filling certain posts, even well paid posts such as that of executioner still shows that, in the popular judgment, money is not everything. If it were everything, no religious threats could ever prevent a, universal assault upon riches. I know women, and men also, who would refuse a fortune if it had to be gained by becoming a butcher ; so strong are certain aversions, even purely sentimental and sesthetic ones. The moral horror of crime more powerful in most hearts than any other aversion will, therefore, always drive us away from criminals, whatever may be the prospects of life hereafter. This horror will only become stronger when, for the usual sentiments of hatred, anger, and revenge, which the presence of a criminal causes us, there will, by degrees, be substituted the sentiment of pity of that pity which we feel for inferior or ill-born beings, for the involuntary monstrosities of nature. The only enduring element worthy of respect in the idea of sanction is neither the notion of pain nor that of reward ; it is the conception of the ideal good, as necessarily having a sufficient force of realization to impose itself on nature, It would seem to us right that the just to invade the whole world. and gentle man should one day have the last word in the universe. But this reign of goodness dreamt of by humanity does not need the The moral operations of human legislature in order to establish itself. sentiment may consider itself as being of necessity the great force and This ambition of morality to progresthe mainspring of the universe. great change in the aspect
—
—
—
—
—
sively invade nature, through the
medium
thing in the domain of philosophy foster
to
the missionary
spirit.
;
it is
No myth
of humanity, also that
whatever
is
which is
the highest is
mOst
fit
to
here necessary
arouse the ardour for goodness and the sentiment of universal
fraternity.
That which is great and beautiful suffices in itself— carries and its flame" (" L'lrr^ligion de I'Avenir," p. 358),
in itself its light
208
MORALITY INDEPENDENT OF OBLIGATION OR SANCTION.
CONCLUSION. will not be without value to sum up the which we have developed in this work. Our aim was to find out what a moral philosophy would be without any absolute obligation, and without any absolute
In conclusion,
it
principal ideas
how far positive science can go in this direction, and where does the sphere of metaphysical speculations sanction
begin
;
?
law anterior or superior we have to had to start from the facts themselves in order to deduce a law; to start from reality, to build up an ideal, and to extract a moral philosophy from nature. Now, the essential and Systematically putting aside every th.& facts,
consequently
ai.
priori and categorical,
constitutive fact of our nature
is
that
we
are living, feeling,
and thinking beings. It is from life, both in its physical and moral form, that we have had to demand a principle of conduct. It is indispensable that this principle
double character,
two parts
in
for
man
life,
—into
unconscious and conscious
Most
moralists
It
nevertheless, the unconscious
is,
which true,
the sphere of
may, in
the
conscious
or sub-conscious
Conscious
the true source of activity.
is
destroy,
only
see
should present a
so to speak, divides itself into
long run, react upon and
by the acuteness of
its
analysis, that
life,
life. life.
life it
is
gradually
which the
individuals or nations.
has accumulated among Consciousness has a dissolving force,
which the
and even the
obscure
has
not
necessity
synthesis
of
utilitarian
taken of
heredity
sufficiently
re-establishing
into
the
evolutionist
account.
harmony
school
Hence
the
between
the
and the spontaneity of the unconscious instinct. A principle of action must be found which shall be common to the two spheres, and which. reflection
of consciousness
CONCLUSION.
209
consequently, while becoming conscious of
have found
in
life
becoming conscious of
extension, does
increases
its
own
tends more
itself.
and mental manifestations. of its intensity and its
possible, with regard to its physical
Life, in
itself,
This principle we believe to the most intensive and the most extensive
to fortify than to destroy
not tend to
itself,
own
its
destruction
;
but
it
force.
However, there are also antinomies in the sphere of which are produced by the struggle between individualities, by the competition of all beings for happiness, and sometimes for existence. In nature the antinomy of the struggle for life is nowhere solved ; it is the life
dream of the as
much
moralist to solve
For
as possible.
to appeal
to a
to this law
—
—
law superior to
supernatural law.
eternal,
it
or, at least, to
at least as law.
life
itself
spring from an hypothesis. life
—an
it
tempted
intelligible,
We have given up appealing We have relegated the intelli-
gible world to the region of hypothesis,
obliged to appeal to
reduce
this reason the moralist is
and a law cannot therefore, we are But then it is a
Once more,
to regulate
life.
more complete, a larger life, which is able to regulate a less complete and smaller life. Such, in fact, is the only possible moral philosophy. which has enabled us to unite, a union which is the to a certain extent, egoism and altruism philosopher's stone of morality is that which we have rule for
The
an exclusively
scientific
characteristic of life
—
called itself
others,
in
others,
individual
and,
if
life
should diffuse
necessary,
should
up ; and this expansion is not contrary nature; on the contrary, it is in accordance with
yield its
The
moral fecundity. for
—
itself
nature; nay, more,
The
it
utilitarian school
is
the
very
condition of true
to its
life.
has been obliged to stop short with
more or less hesitation before this perpetual antithesis of Me and Thee, of Mine and Thine, of personal interest and general But living nature does not stop short at this cutinterest. and-dried, this logically inflexible division.
Individual
life
MORALITY INDEPENDENT OF OBLIGATION OR SANCTION.
210 is
expansive for others because
by the very reason that
fruitful
regard to physical
that
life,
it is
another individual
to beget
is
it
it
is
with
the need of each individual
much
so
;
and
fruitful,
We have seen,
it is life.
that this other
so
becomes a necessary condition of our being. Life, like fire, only maintains itself by communicating itself ; and this is none the less true with regard to the intelligence than with regard to the body. It is as impossible to shut up the intelligence as to shut up flame ; it exists in order to radiate. We find the same force of expansion in sensibility. We need to share our joy ; we need to share our sorrow. It is our whole nature which absolute classifications
metaphysicians
;
We are
to be.
it
Life does not
is sociable.
and
cannot be entirely
open on
and encroached upon.
selfish,
even
is
not only nutrition
to
spend as well as
After having stated this general law of
we have
find out
tried to
mean
to
; it is
to gain.
physical
how some
equivalent to obligation might be derived therefrom.
does obligation actually
wished
if it
on all sides encroaching This springs from the fundamental :
life,
the
and the
sides,
all
law which biology teaches us Life production and fecundity. To live is psychical
know
divisions of the logicians
and
sort of
What
him who does not admit
an absolute imperative or a transcendental law ? A form of impulsion. In fact, analyse " moral obliga" duty," " the moral law " tion," that which gives them their character of action is the impulsion which is inseparable from it it is the force demanding exercise. Well, it is this impulsive force which has appeared to us to "Fejhe first either
certain
:
;
natural equivalent of supernatural duty. still
toomuch absorbed "by
think of nothing but the aim, which to reducible to pleasure.
they
make
They
of pleasure, be
it
the great spring of mental
The
utilitarians are
considerations of finaUty.
them
are Hedonists
in
a
life.
selfish
—that
finality.
We
We, on the
declare that there
is
is
to say,
or sympathetic form, contrary, place
ourselves at the point of view of efficient causality,
of
They
is utility, itself
and not a cause in us which
;
CONCLUSION.
211
operates as an aim, even before any attraction of pleasure this
cause
tending by
is life,
its
very nature to grow and to
diffuse itself, thus finding pleasure as consequence, but
necessarily taking
as an
it
end
in itself.
not
The living being
is
not purely and simply a calculation a la Bentham, a banker putting
down
To live
is
book the balance of profit and loss. it is to act. There is in the living being an accumulation of force, a reserve of activity, which spends
in his big
not to calculate,
not for the pleasure of spending
itself
because spending
a
itself,
but
of its very existence. It is impossible that a cause should not produce its effects, even if there be no consideration of aim or object. We have thus reached our fundamental formula. Duty is
is
necessity
but an expression detached from the power which neces-
sarily
tends to pass into action.
By duty we do but
nate that power which, passing beyond respect to
because
an
it
; becomes that which which it can be, because
ideal
that
it is
ought to be,
it it
desig-
becomes with
reality,
is
the germ of
There is no supernatural principle whatever in our morality it is from life itself, and from the force inherent in life, that it all springs. Life makes its own law by its aspiration towards incessant development it makes its own obligation to act by its very power of action. the future already bursting forth in the present.
;
;
As we have
already explained, instead of saying,
I can,
Hence a
certain impersonal duty is created by the very power to
act.
Such
it is
the
is
more
first
true to say,
I can,
/ must, I must.
therefore
therefore
natural equivalent of the mystical
and
transcendental duty.
The second equivalent we have found idea-forces upheld
The
in the theory of the
by a contemporary philosopher
(Fouillde).
very idea of the superior action, as that of every action,
a force tending
commenced from
to its realization.
The idea itself is
realization of the superior action.
is
already the
Obligation
but the sense of the profound identity which exists between thought and action. It is, for is,
this point of view,
212
MORALITY INDEPENDENT OF OBLIGATION OR SANCTION.
of being, of the unity does not, by his action, conform to his highest thought is at war with himself, is inwardly divided this very reason, the sense of the unity
of
He who
life.
against himself. Here, again,
we have
got beyond Hedonism.
not a question of calculating pleasures, of making up accounts, and of finality. It is a question of being and of It is
of feeling oneself be, of feeUng oneself live
living,
as
we
are
and
as
we
live
;
to be, not a sort of
;
to act
lie in action,
but a truth in action.
A
borrowed from the sensifrom the intelligence and the activity. It is from the growing fusion of sensibilities, and from the increasingly sociable character of elevated pleasures, that a kind of duty or superior necessity springs, which moves us, quite naturally and rationally, towards others. third equivalent of duty
bility
is
not, like the preceding ones,
;
virtue of evolution our pleasures become wider and more and more impersonal. We cannot enjoy ourselves Our environment, in ourselves as on an isolated island. to which we better adapt ourselves every day, is human society, and we can no more be happy outside this environment than we can breathe beyond the atmosphere of the
By
The
earth. is
an
truly
purely selfish happiness of certain epicureans
an abstraction, an impossibility.
fancy,
idle
human
pleasures are
we have
all,
more
or less, social.
The Pure
being a real affirmaThus, in our activity, in our intelligence, in our sensibiUty, there is a pressure which exercises itself in the altruistic sense. There is a force of expansion as powerful as the one which acts on the stars ; and it is this force of expansion which, becoming selfishness, as
tion of
self, is
said, instead of
a mutilation of self
power, gives to
name of
conscious of
its
This, then,
the treasure of natural spontaneousness, which
is life,
is
and which,
But, as
at the
we have
thesis with natural
way as to
restrain
itself
same time,
the
duty;
creates moral wealth.
may find itself in antispontaneousness it may work in such a seen, reflection
;
both the power and the duty of sociability,
CONCLUSION.
when by chance
213
the force of expansion towards others finds
opposition to the force of gravitation to
itself in
struggle for
life
may be diminished by
it
are
frequent in our day.
re-appears
The
under certain circumstances, which In such case, without impera-
lution; still
self.
the progress of evo-
what will urge the individual to definite disand sometimes to self-sacrifice ? Besides these motives, which we have previously examined, and which, under normal conditions, are constantly being brought into action, we have found others, which we called the love of '^physical risk " and the love of " moral risk!' tive
law,
interestedness,
Man is a being fond of speculation practice.
where
—not only
in theory, but in
Neither his thought nor his action stops at the point
A
his certitude ends.
purely speculative hypothesis
can, without danger, be substituted for the categorical law
;
same way, a mere hope can be substituted for dogmatic faith, and action for affirmation. The speculative hypothesis is a risk of the mind the action which conforms in the
;
a risk of the will. The superior being undertakes and risks the most, either by his
to this hypothesis is
he who
is
thought or by his actions.
This superiority springs from a
he has more power. he has a higher duty.
greater treasure of inward force this very reason,
Even the
sacrifice of life
expansion of
life,
;
may
still
which has become
For
be, in certain cases,
an
sufficiently intense to
mere There are hours, as we have seen, possible to say at one and the same time: " I
prefer an impulse of sublime exaltation to years of
grovelling existence. in
which it is have lived."
live; I
physical and moral agonies last for years, one can, so to speak, die to self during a whole existence, the reverse is also true, and it is possible to concentrate a whole life into one moment of love and sacrifice. If certain
and
if
Lastly, in the
act by its
its
same way
that
very power to act,
very action
;
it
for, in acting, it
life
creates
also creates
takes joy in
obligation to
its its its
sanction by
own
capacity.
<> ''^
;
214
MORALITY INDEPENDENT OF OBLIGATION OR SANCTION.
Acting
less, it finds less
Even
more.
in dying
enjoyment
in sacrificing itself
conscious of
it is
acting more,
;
life
it
finds itself again
enjoys ;
even
plenitude, which will reappear
its
elsewhere, indestructible under other forms, since nothing in the
world
To sum can solve
is lost.
up,
—
if
action
it is
not
the power
and
of
entirely, at least partially
life
which alone
— those problems
which abstract thought gives rise. The sceptic, in morality as well as in metaphysics, believes that he deceives to
himself and
all
other?
;
believes that
humanity
will
always
merely a "marking-time." He is wrong. He does not see that our fathers have spared us the very errors into which they fell, and that we will spare those who follow us our own errors ; he does deceive
not see that, after that this itself.
the pretended progress
itself; that
all,
in all errors there
particle of truth
On
is
is
some truth, and and confirms
gradually grows
the other hand, he
who has a dogmatic
faith
believes that he possesses, to the exclusion of all others, the
whole definite and imperative truth. He is wrong. He does not see that errors mingle with every truth, that there is nothing as yet in the thought of man which is perfect enough to be final. The first believes that humanity does not advance ; the second, that it has already arrived at its goal. There is a mean between these two hypotheses we must say to ourselves that humanity is marching forward, :
and we must march forward ourselves. said, is as good as prayer. It is even or, rather, it is
the true prayer
—the true human providence.
Let us act instead of praying.
and
men
Work, as has been better than prayer
Let us have hope only in ourus count on ourselves.
Hope, ahead (providere). The difference between supernatural Providence and natural hope is that the one pretends to directly modify na,ture by supernatural means, like itself; while the other from the^ first modifies only ourselves. It is a force which is not superior selves
in other
like Providence, sees
to us,
but interior
;
;
let
sometimes
it
is
we
far
ourselves
whom
it
carries
CONCLUSION. onward.
It
the world
is
remains to be seen following us,
if
we
thought
Let us go on
carry nature along.
We
if
215 are going alone,
will ever
if
be able to
the same.
all
upon the deck of some great vessel, whose rudder had been torn away by a wave, and whose mast had been broken by the wind. It had been lost on the sea, as our planet was in space. It went on thus at random, driven on by the storm, like a great wreck carrying people neverstand as
if
;
theless,
it
arrived at
perhaps humanity,
which
it
will
This
is
—
will
Perhaps our planet, also arrive at an unknown goal, destination.
have created for
eye looks out for
broken
its
or, rather,
a great
task,
us.
itself.
No hand directs us, no
The rudder has long
there never was one
and
it is
our task.
;
it
since been
has to be made.
fcA"^*h.
V*.